


Sergeant Jekyll and Agent Hyde

by andchaos



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Disorder, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, split personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-07-24 13:30:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 60,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7510210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has this <i>thing</i> inside him. Sometimes he is Bucky Barnes—sergeant, charmer, and Steve’s best friend. Sometimes he is the Winter Soldier—assassin, machine, and humanity’s worst enemy. Except when Steve found him, he didn’t become one or the other; he didn’t become a mix of the two. He’s just…both. Either-or. A two for one deal, all wrapped up in the same pounding head.</p><p>Bucky doesn’t trust the asset. The asset doesn’t understand Bucky. The only thing they can both agree on a hundred percent of the time is this: They both would go to the ends of the earth for Steve Rogers.</p><p>And whatever he is—whoever he is—Steve loves him too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i'm like a machine (but i still have dreams)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt originally from [a brilliant anon](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/144727084745), who deserves all my love for kickstarting this fic.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @ [freyias](http://freyias.tumblr.com/). i'll try to update every other sunday ((good luck to me))
> 
> xoxox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The asset walks for days. Days turn into months. Sometimes he blacks out, but he’s awake a lot of the time. Sometimes when he blacks in he finds that he’s in the same city and nothing has changed, he only lost a few hours. Sometimes it’s a week later and he’ll find that he’s three states over. He’s showered, or washed his clothes. Once he wakes up with a row of hairties along his wrist and is grateful as he ties his hair back so the spring heat will stop making it stick with sweat to his skin.
> 
> It’s strange. When he blacks out, there seems to be more to it than just "survive." The asset thinks that if he were to black out and still be himself, he would go into autopilot and just focus on surviving. But he blacks out and wants more than that: He finds comfort. He bought hairties.
> 
> He doesn’t know where to even begin to seek help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: chapter includes mentions of HYDRA experiments on bucky, mentions of murder, violent memories, etc. nothing super graphic but it's there. also a good dose of self-hatred.

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          The asset likes to watch the water. It’s a strange thing that he doesn’t think about, not really. Three days after the Potomac he wakes up in Florida with a feeling in his aching legs like he ran all the way there. The asset does not worry about pain; he fights through it. He wakes with the rising sun and stretches his arms above his head; he flexes his flesh-and-blood fingers; he recalibrates his metal arm. He stretches out his legs and the rest of his body too, in the early sunlight streaming through his safehouse window.

          “My mission,” he mumbles to himself while he does, “is to subdue, capture, and bring in Steven Grant Rogers. Alias: Captain America. Nickname: Steve. Mission is fast, strong, and well trained. Last seen in Washington, D.C. Known bases include: D.C., Manhattan, and Brooklyn.”

          The asset shakes his head.

          “Known bases include D.C. and Manhattan,” he tries again, rougher this time.  “He is armed and dangerous. He is likely confused.”

          Repeating his mission helps him keep his head on straight while he’s away from HYDRA base. The longer he’s gone, the harder it is to keep everything filed away effortlessly, and he knows he can’t get anything wrong—not just for the mission’s sake, but for his own; if his handlers know he’s screwing up, even the tiniest, most insignificant piece of intelligence, he’s going to get burned. Or iced. Or bludgeoned. Whatever.

          Still, he adds the last part with some amount of trepidation and hesitance. The Captain didn’t _seem_ confused. Well, maybe a little once he saw the asset, but that wasn’t confusion in the sense that the asset knows he meant it before. The mission seemed very sure of _what_ was going on, just more fuzzy on the _why_. And if the mission wasn’t confused, that meant that the asset was.

          He shakes his head.

          “My mission,” he starts again, “is to subdue, capture, and bring in Steven Grant Rogers.”

          He failed once. He will not fail a second time.

          He can’t afford to.

 

\- - -

 

          After his morning stretch, and his morning run, the asset walks down by the water he jogged past earlier. A quick assessment of his surroundings informs him of several things, from which he deduces that he’s somewhere near Boca Raton. No matter where the mission is, he’s pretty sure that he’s nowhere near Boca Raton.

          The asset shakes his head to himself. That line of thinking will get him nowhere. He just has to regroup and try again. For now, he gets a relaxing morning by the water.

          He buys himself a bag of pastries from a shop down the road and eats it as he wanders down the boardwalk. He knows enough to know that he needs to keep his face covered; he pins his hair back with a hairtie he asked for from a woman’s wrist in the pastry shop, and he steals a hoodie from a Walmart that he wears fully zipped with the hood tugged up over his head. It’s far too hot for any of that, but he knows secrecy is his most important priority right now, and he won’t risk it because he’s a little uncomfortable. He’s usually a little uncomfortable. Anyway, he’s used to much worse.

          Distantly, as he stares out across the lake that’s glimmering in the morning sunlight, he wonders where his handlers are now. They should have contacted him by now. Actually, he should have contacted them at least a week ago, but he panicked. He’s supposed to check in twice a week, but after the fiasco in D.C. he just ran, and he missed the last call. Usually HYDRA would already be tracking him; usually they would have already tracked him down. Something deep in him wonders if something’s gone wrong, but he waves the thought away. Nothing can take them down. They aren’t all-powerful, he’s aware—but they are always able to subdue _him_ , and he’s supposed to be the deadliest assassin in the world right now.

          The asset didn’t contact his higher-ups, and he missed it if they tried to contact him, and now he’s standing at the edge of a lake in Florida and every part of him just wants to run. He never got very far, and after awhile he just stopped trying. But now he knows he’s in for a world of trouble whenever they get around to finding him, and he doesn’t want to be around for that.

          After he realizes that, he doesn’t move for a very long time. He stands in front of the water and eats his pastry, and when that’s done he eats the second one he bought, then the third. He licks his fingers clean. Then he just stands and stares at the water, watching the sun rise up higher in the sky and thinking about what it would be like to be a star beside it in the heavens. He doesn’t wish—the asset hasn’t wished in a very, very long time. But he still wonders sometimes.

          When it’s a little past noon and the boardwalk is starting to fill up with people—families clogging the small path, children running underfoot, businessmen in suits and businesswomen talking on phones—he drops his trash into the nearest can and calmly walks away from the lake. When he gets back to his safehouse, he bundles his meager collection of whatever he’s managed to gather and bothered to keep, wraps it all in the blanket he’s been using as a bedroll, ties it up, throws it over his shoulder, and leaves the warehouse.

          He does not look back. When he leaves the county; when he crosses the state line; when the day turns to night turns to day turns to night; he walks and walks and he does not stop, he does not look back.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          Bucky wakes up scared. He sits bolt upright, the blanket around him getting all tangled and messy as he does so. It feels like he’s locked in a straightjacket, or in a container again, so he scrambles to his feet with his heart pounding and his breathing unsteady. He backs against the wall and his eyes dart around the room. Only when he finally determines that it’s safe does he relax, just minutely, and try to settle his racing pulse.

          Once he has a moment away from his blind panic, Bucky takes in the room he’s in a little more closely. He edges away from the wall, skittish as hell but working up that combat-vet bravery he knows he has somewhere deep inside still, and gets just far enough in that he can see the whole room but not leave his back exposed or anything.

          It’s mostly empty, really. There’s a few things scattered around—chairs, dusty books, used and rusted silverware, red marks on the floor that look like droplets of carmine ink—that Bucky guesses must have all been around since long, long before he found this boarded up old shack. He doesn’t hear anyone else inside, but he’s still careful and silent as he edges away from the wall and begins to circle the room, small concentric circles getting larger and larger so that he doesn’t miss anything.

          He doesn’t find anyone in the shack, and there isn’t anybody there. That doesn’t stop him from being on edge. There are sounds echoing up to him from the bustling city nearby. He thinks, from his enhanced hearing, that he might be a couple of blocks from real civilization—or maybe the world just hasn’t woken up enough yet to make any real noise around the building he’s in. Bucky almost doesn’t want to check. Silence is weaponized now; this is where they get the drop on him. That pillar is where they’ll jump out from behind. That window is where the boards will break. In his head he cuts his hand open on a rusty nail diving for cover from the gunfire that will ensue. In his head, the HYDRA agents that find him haul him up by his arms and stick more rusty nails in him to see how fast he’ll heal or what kinds of diseases he might contract (the answers are: very quickly, and he won’t). They didn’t usually laugh during these tests, but in his head, where they fall in from the ceiling and stick him with rusty nails, they do laugh.

          There is nobody waiting in ambush for him. Bucky edges out from the corner he’s pressed himself into, his chest just beginning to heave. He silences himself, cursing his loud breathing, and goes back over to the blanket he woke up in.

          Poking around the pile that was his makeshift bedroll, Bucky finds a few things: a spider, a crushed cell phone with no SIM card, and a pocket knife. He pokes around on the phone for a couple of seconds, but it’s well and truly dead. There’s no use speculating who might have once been on the other line, so he throws it to the ground and crushes it even more under his boot, until pieces splinter off and scatter on the hardwood. Then he kicks the mess under a dusty bookcase shoved up against one of the walls. The pocket knife he picks up and sticks in his pocket. He probably doesn’t need the blanket, but upon further contemplation, he decides that he might _want_ the sheet later.

          He pauses and breathes deeply. He is Bucky Barnes, and bad things happened to him, so he is allowed to want some things. Something, at least.

          He’s also a fugitive and a killer and a million and one other things that mean he should probably not be allowed anything he wants. In his mind, one very specific something flashes in front of his eyes—something he knows from storefront posters and magazine covers and public televisions is very, very alive. Something he really, really doesn’t deserve.

          Bucky breathes out. He takes the blanket and heads outside.

          The sunlight is bright on his sensitive eyes, and he holds his hand up. Impaired vision is not optimal for defending himself. It’s still early, just past sunrise probably, and the light just stretches over the horizon at the perfect angle to hit his vision. Bucky ducks his head and grumbles as he slinks over in a swift, agile motion to shade provided by an outcropping of the roof of the building he awoke in. He looks up again quickly to take in his surroundings.

          He’s not anywhere he recognizes. A bird flies overhead, and as he traces its path with his eyes, he notices a street sign on the corner of the road. As he gets closer—looking all around him for a tail as he goes—the letters shimmer into recognizable shapes.

          _Grant Street_. Well, that’s not at all helpful. He spots a newspaper stand down the road though, the kind that’s in bins and take a quarter to open. He only has to hunt along the ground for about five minutes before he finds enough spare cents to pay for it. Bucky may not know where he is, but he knows one thing: Cities never change.

          The name on the paper is the _Pittsburgh Post Gazette_. Bucky reads the headlines for a minute, just skimming. Something about a Congressman he’s never heard of. The next page talks about a judge he doesn’t know about. Bucky throws the paper down. At least he has a city now. He doesn’t know how he ended up in Pennsylvania when he was last conscious in South Carolina, but he doesn’t really care. He’s here now. He doesn’t _explicitly_ have a place in mind that he’s going, but somewhere in the back of his head he knows he’s searching for something familiar. If he’s heading north, as he apparently is, it’s more likely to be some _where_ familiar.

          Bucky can’t think like that now, though. Now he needs something to eat, to figure out if he’s done anything else wrong in his most recent fugue state (he’s never exactly been an upstanding citizen in his past ones), and to plan his next move before it gets dark again. His mind is an increasingly terrible place to live.

          He has theories, though. Theories he’s afraid of putting into words. If it’s not a fugue state—if he’s still—

          Bucky swallows hard and shakes his head to clear it. He needs to be at the top of his game right now, not worrying about things he can’t fix. Maybe he’ll find a way out later, but for now he only has one job: _Survive_. And he’s very, very good at it. A storefront window, reflecting back his thirty some-odd year old body holding his nearly hundred year old mind, attests to this more than any of the life and death flowing in Bucky’s veins.

          He tucks the paper under his arm so he’ll blend in more. He’s just an average guy. Sure, he looks dirty and homeless and in desperate need of therapy, but that’s fine—he has a _newspaper_. He can’t be anything but normal.

          At least, this is what Bucky hopes people are thinking as he begins to circle the park again for spare change. It takes him over an hour, but he finally scrapes together enough to walk into a bakery and get something for his rumbling stomach. Whatever experiments HYDRA did on him makes him need about three times the nutrition that regular people do, and Bucky’s only eating about a quarter as much as them. He circles the block and finds a bakery somewhere where nobody might have seen him out the window, scrounging for coins on the ground. He doesn’t need to pull in any more suspicion than absolutely necessary.

          After he eats (not nearly enough) he goes to find somewhere to have a shower. Even just a lake will do, but he wants somewhere secluded enough that it won’t look _totally_ weird if he starts stripping down. Besides, he needs to avoid getting arrested for public indecency. Those charges would probably match at least three others on record, but as those are from the 1930s, he’s not sure he wants his background looked into. Nothing freaks the general public out more than seeing someone they deem crazy though, so the priority remains—he needs to bathe so people won’t _act_ like he’s crazy. If they do, one wrong move could bring the cops down on him faster than he can get away. Bucky’s fast, but warrants are pervasive.

          There aren’t any secluded areas around for him to shower in. He walks into a building, the first not-abandoned one he sees, to ask about it. There’s someone sitting behind the counter when he first walks in, her chin in her hand, looking tired as well as bored as she scrolls through something on her phone. Bucky’s eyes linger curiously over the screen as he marches over. He knows what cell phones are—he’s not completely out of the modern loop, he _does_ get out of his fugue state occasionally—but he doesn’t understand _everything_ about them. The girl is swiping through a thumbgame and her phone is big and the display looks like a television screen, like the kind Bucky used to watch on an old, rickety set for the one summer they had a neighbor rich enough to afford one. He doesn’t really get what she’s doing, but before he can snoop for too long, the girl looks up.

          “Can I help you?” she says tonelessly.

          Bucky clears his throat. Even when he ordered food earlier, he mostly just pointed and grunted at the sandwich board. Now he has to _talk_ , and he realizes it’s been a good long while since he did that. He doesn’t even know how long.

          “Shower,” he manages. The girl blinks at him. Bucky clears his throat again, frustrated. Talking to girls—and boys, if they seemed interested—used to be so _easy_. How had he managed it then? He can’t quite recall well enough to recreate his easy charm. He tries again anyway. “I need a…shower if you can get me one. Or any old lake or pond will do.”

          He attempts a smile and a wink here, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t pull off either of those _or_ the joking tone that would make her think he was just kidding about the pond stuff. Now she definitely thinks he’s crazy, weird, and a lot creepy.

          He wonders what kinds of people usually come in here though, because she just looks down disinterestedly and goes back to her game. With the hand not occupied on her phone, she points to her right and says, “Locker rooms are through there.”

          Oh, well then. Bucky realizes he must have accidentally stumbled into a gym, which he didn’t even _think_ of.

          He wonders if he’s supposed to sign up or something to get inside, but the girl’s not looking at him anymore and he really doesn’t want to leave a paper trail with his name, especially since he’s been legally dead for seventy years—just in case somebody bothers to check. He doesn’t have a license or anything to confirm anyway, so maybe even signing in is pointless. Still, before the girl can change her mind, Bucky hurries off in the direction she indicated.

          It’s clear pretty quickly why she didn’t try harder to stop him from entering without some form of identification. The whole place is pretty rundown and gross. If anybody’s been in to clean in the past decade, they weren’t doing it in the men’s locker room.

          Half of the showers are out of use, and there’s no products for him to use. He manages to scrape enough out of the soap dispenser by the sinks to scrub most of the matted dirt out of his hair and from under his nails. It doesn’t help that he still remembers the last real shower he had (or at least, the last shower he can remember). It was a year ago, and he was holed up in a motel room while away on a mission from HYDRA. He was gone long enough that he started to wake up again. That happened sometimes—the longer he was away from HYDRA, the more often he flickered back into his own mind. He remembers the water pressure in that motel bathroom, at least three times as strong as this one he’s under now; and there were complimentary soaps and shampoos, and towels fluffy enough that they felt like they were rubbing his skin raw because he kept expecting it to somehow bite back. HYDRA loved that trick; give him something nice for just long enough to believe he might get to keep it, then take it away in a blink of an eye. What was Hell, after all, without the hope that he might one day get out? If he could get used to the pain, wouldn’t he be desensitized after awhile? Wasn’t it better to keep the hope alive, because the ripping it away was so cutting?

          They never gave him the chance to know. HYDRA was good at a lot of things like that.

          While he has unlimited water, Bucky wonders things. He thinks about having to conserve water religiously back in Brooklyn (a lifetime ago, at least). He thinks about what he does in his fugue states: He used to think that he was just a weapon, used and controlled, following orders at will. Now he’s not so sure. Do weapons steal blankets? Maybe, but it’s warm enough to go without if necessary. Do weapons do _anything_ that isn’t strictly necessary?

          Bucky shakes his head, and water droplets go flying away from his hair as it whips around. The noise of them hitting the wall startles him back to himself, and he shuts off the water before he can sink away into his own head again. He wonders how much time has passed; his skin is lightly pink where the water was too hot to bear, although that will fade in ten minutes or so.

          He just wants to get back out to where there are people around, to remind himself that he’s not the only one left in the world. Sometimes he doesn’t know if it would be better that way or not. At least there wouldn’t be anyone to hurt that way.

          He redresses quickly. He doesn’t have anything but the clothes he was already wearing, but the jeans and shirt and hoodie all feel vaguely dirty now, even though they’re still soft as grass. He doesn’t really have the privilege of concern right now though, so he ignores the way a voice in the back of his head chimes in—it doesn’t sound like his voice at all. It sounds like a memory, a laugh twined through the words when it says, “Hey, Buck—you gonna walk around covered in grease all day, or were you gonna shower before you headed out?”—and goes back out the way he’d come in. There’s a couple of people milling around the gym lobby now besides the girl still behind the desk, and he keeps his head down and tugs his hood up and he heads back outside. He doesn’t need to be recognized.

          He’s not sure where he wants to go, after that. He thinks he knows where he was heading, fugue state or not, but he isn’t sure he actually wants to _be_ there. He doesn’t know what he’ll find; he doesn’t know that he wants to know. Things are rarely as he left them; his own body is proof enough of that.

          In the end, he decides to go out to the water. He doesn’t know where there might _be_ water, but he wants to see some anyway. He’s always liked how it looked, stretched out blue and clear in the shining sunlight, heading over the horizon to places Bucky can’t even see or fathom. He feels small then, and he likes feeling small sometimes. Right now he could really use a reminder that the universe is infinitely bigger than he’ll ever be.

          He walks around for three hours before he gives up. The sun is stretching to a place past noon, and he’s lost with a deep emptiness uncoiling in his stomach when he decides to call it on finding water by himself. He doesn’t want to be recognized still, so he can’t interact too much, but he really needs to stop thinking for awhile.

          There’s an old lady that he thinks might be safe; she’s sitting on a park bench reading a book. She has a cane next to her, and worst comes to worst, Bucky’s pretty sure she at _least_ won’t be able to alert any authorities before he can run out of there. Besides, even if his picture is plastered all over every major news station by now, there’s a higher chance she won’t have seen it than there is of being safe trying to talk to someone younger.

          He even pulls his hood down as he approaches, trying to look as innocuous as possible. He clasps his hands together behind his back, and this time when he tries out his old-Bucky charm, it comes out a lot more naturally.

          “Hey there, ma’am,” he says. He sounds a little gravelly, voice still somewhat out of use, so he ducks his head submissively to compensate. Well, at least HYDRA taught him one thing.

          “Hello young man,” the old woman says, smiling at him. “Isn’t it just a wonderful day to be out for a walk?”

          “It sure is,” Bucky says earnestly. “I was wondering if you could help me out with something. See, I’m new around these parts, and—”

          “Oh, I’m just hopeless with directions,” the woman says. “But I might be able to help you out anyway.”

          “I hope you can,” says Bucky, still sugary-sweet. “See, I told my girl I’d meet her out by the water this morning after I picked us up some coffees, but I’m afraid I just got hopelessly turned around trying to navigate the city by myself.”

          “Small town boy, huh?” she says. Bucky grins sheepishly at her.

          “’Fraid so, ma’am.”

          “Well,” she says, brushing dirt off her skirt, “the nearest water front is about two blocks that way. It’s just a community lake some of the kids go into. About ten minutes past the last big building that way, and you should be meeting up with your girl in no time at all.”

          “Thank you so much,” Bucky says. He unclasps his hands because he’s pretty sure it’s starting to look a little creepy hiding them like that, so he proffers them towards her instead in supplication. “You’re a godsend.”

          “Just happy for some light conversation,” she says, but she’s smiling at him. “Have a nice day now, you hear?”

          “You too, ma’am.”

          He bows his head a little and she giggles and waves at him as he backs away. He grins and turns away. He keeps up the innocent pedestrian act until he’s well out of the park in case she looks up and sees him leaving, and then he pulls his hood back over his head, shoves his hands in his sweatshirt pockets, and skulks mostly in the shadows as he heads towards the lake.

          He walks two blocks just like the old lady said, and then he can see the spot where the buildings drop away. He’s about halfway into the more open area when he sees something on a TV running through a storefront window that makes him stop dead. He can’t hear through the window, but the subtitles are on—and there’s no picture, but that police sketch couldn’t be any clearer. They’re talking about him.

          Except Bucky wasn’t even _awake_. He lost nearly a week in fugue until he woke up this morning. So it doesn’t make any sense.

          The woman is speaking quickly, clearly distressed through her calm newscaster veneer. Her words flash in black boxes across the screen:

          _“…just three days ago, when another home was found destroyed. The wife and husband were both inside, believed to have had their throats cut before the fire was set. It is unclear if they were dead before they began to burn. Luckily, the three children were all out of the house when the attack began…”_

          Bucky swallows. He shouldn’t be here—staring at his own face on the TV screen, visible to anyone who cares to connect the dots—yet he can’t stop looking. There are pictures of the two victims now, people that Bucky doesn’t even know. Fugue states are supposed to breed confusion and blankness—not this. He can’t wrap his mind around it.

          (Except that he can. He just doesn’t want to. How much blood has to stain his hands before they’re permanently dark red?)

          _“…looks like an act of vicious revenge, although neither of them have any previous criminal record. Both were well-respected in the community and no evidence has surfaced regarding any allegations of hatred…”_

Unbidden, memories surface. Faceless things—a flash of red nail polish and cold fingers; a voice saying, “Hold him down _harder_ , you idiot!”; somebody slapping him clean across the cheek. But he doesn’t know these two people on screen. He _doesn’t_.

          (He does.)

_“…can’t understand why anyone would commit such a heinous act…”_

Tears well up in his eyes, but he can’t cry them. He feels simultaneously empty inside and like something vicious is clawing at his insides, trying to get out from beneath the oppressive veil of blankness.

_“…believed to be the Winter Soldier. Six months ago he was apprehended for committing various similar crimes, but he disappeared before he could be brought in. Authorities are still searching for…”_

          Bucky abruptly straightens and begins to walk quickly away from the television set. He doesn’t want to see his own face on television. He doesn’t want to see those people beside his own police sketch.

          A voice inside him hisses for him to shut up and admit what he doesn’t want to admit.  Those were HYDRA agents, and they were not innocent people. Bucky has blood on his hands. _He has blood on his hands_. Even more than before.

          Before he gets ten yards, he grabs the nearest trash can and throws up everything he ate that morning. Bucky wretches and wretches until he’s just dry heaving. Then he collapses against the side of the garbage, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. When he looks, he sees the same carmine ink from the floor of the shack on his jacket sleeve. It was hard to tell before—the thing itself is deeply red. Bucky wants to throw up again but there’s nothing in his stomach. He sinks to the ground with his back against the garbage can, and he looks at his hands. He doesn’t recognize them, and not just because they’re shaking and his vision is blurred.

          Bucky’s read the files on the internet, of course. He’s always had access to certain parts of HYDRA’s database, and sometimes when he woke up he would get curious. Whatever they called him… _The Winter Soldier_ …he doesn’t want to be _him_. He wants that to be the name of a weapon, even if that weapon has his face. Not a person. Because a person with his face is just…him.

          Bucky hates him. Or—hates himself? He doesn’t know anymore.

          He wants to control him.

          It takes a long time for his breathing to calm down. He doesn’t cry, but he’s been wanting to. Eventually he feels strong enough to swallow around the lump in his throat and stand up. He looks even more insane than before, sitting here on the sidewalk with people milling around him, while ten yards away a news story talks about two dead parents and his face is drawn out in the corner of the screen. He has to get out of here, he knows. Before somebody recognizes him.

          He walks. He forgets where he was even going until he crosses a footbridge and stops dead on the other side. A clear blue lake stretches out in front of him, vast and unknowable.

          Bucky’s legs are still shaking minutely as he walks down the boardwalk. When he gets to the end, he puts his hands on the railing and just stares off across the water. That familiar, blessed feeling of meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things overtakes him again. He looks at the water for a long time, with the scent of it in his nose and the breeze on his skin. He closes his eyes and tilts his smooth-lined face up towards the sky.

          Bucky Barnes has no idea who he is. But the universe doesn’t either.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          When the asset wakes up, he’s alone.

          Well, he’s always alone. He’s not anywhere public though. He remembers falling asleep in an old abandoned building with boarded windows and everything, but he must have blacked out again. That’s been happening more and more recently.  It’s unsettling, because the asset doesn’t know anything about what he does then. He doesn’t dream, but if he could, he would hope that his blacking out was just him waking up in another universe. One where he isn’t an asset. One where he has a name.

          There’s a thick taste like bile in his mouth. He gets up—his senses tell him he’s alone in this room, what looks like a motel in some strange city. He fell asleep in Pittsburgh, but he doesn’t think he’s there anymore—and goes into the bathroom to rinse his mouth out in the sink. Strange, but the last time he was in a motel bathroom, he was on a mission. It must have been only last year, but it feels like forever ago. So much has changed.

          In the bedroom, he finds the blanket that he stole from some homeless man’s tent tucked away in a corner by the bed. He doesn’t need it anymore—it’s early spring, and perfectly warm most of the time—but he finds himself folding it up neatly and tucking it into his pocket anyway. It’s better to be safe than sorry, he reasons. His body is plenty of things, but immune to hypothermia may not be one of them. He doesn’t really want to test it out.

          (He remembers Captain America though. Maybe people like them don’t get hypothermia the way regular people do, because Captain America died from ice, and then he wasn’t dead anymore. The asset read those files.)

          He leaves the motel without dropping the keys off at the front desk or anything. He doesn’t like speaking to strangers, and he doesn’t want to see anyone. He just wants to stay hidden.

          He pulls his hood up over his head, picks a direction, and begins to walk.

 

          The asset walks for days. Days turn into months. Sometimes he blacks out, but he’s awake a lot of the time. Sometimes when he blacks in he finds that he’s in the same city and nothing has changed, he only lost a few hours. Sometimes it’s a week later and he’ll find that he’s three states over. He’s showered, or washed his clothes. Once he wakes up with a row of hairties along his wrist and is grateful as he ties his hair back so the spring heat will stop making it stick with sweat to his skin.

          It’s strange. When he blacks out, there seems to be more to it than just _survive_. The asset thinks that if he were to black out and still be himself, he would go into autopilot and just focus on surviving. But he blacks out and wants more than that: He finds comfort. He bought hairties.

          This is senseless, he realizes. There is no one else. He may want to not be alone, but there is just him, and the wide open sky of fugitivity, and the gnawing, gaping hole in his chest where there used to be purpose and now there is nothing.

          He tears the tie out of his hair and snaps it cleanly in two.

 

          It’s been six months since the Potomac and the asset wakes up by a river. At first that’s all he hears; just the sound of rushing water and nothing else. He wonders why he’s outside. Usually when he blacks in, there’s four walls and relative safety. Even on autopilot, he knows what he’s doing when it comes to being safe.

          Then he realizes that people are hitting him.

          Something strange bubbles up in his chest that he doesn’t understand. He pushes it aside, as it’s not necessary to think about right now. As for the fight, it’s nothing he can’t handle. This is nothing like the whips and chains (and burns and pains) of HYDRA; this is just some weak punches and kicks to his sides, to his back. In an instant the asset springs to his feet and lays into his attackers.

          He quickly assesses the situation. There are four of them and one of him. They are all clearly drunk. He doesn’t know why they’re hassling him, but he profiles them quickly and guesses easily enough. They’re young men, probably rich, very filthy and very hammered. He’s just some dirty guy in a hoodie. Either he looked like an easy target or he looked like a drug addict that people like this like to beat up for fun. Either way the asset turns on them in an instant, and with it he turns the tide of the fight.

          He doesn’t know why he was on the ground. Then one of them says, “Holy shit—you were just having a fucking seizure, dude! How the fuck are you—”

          There’s spit on his chin and a tremor in his hands like he was shaking and it hasn’t quite left him yet. He feels…wrong. But a seizure? He’s seen seizures before and he thinks he feels the way they looked afterwards, sitting up with dark circles beneath their eyes. But master assassins don’t get seizures. Neither do classified weapons.

          The fight is over as soon as he begins to fight back. He ignores their spluttering confusion and lays into them, punching this one across the face and that one in the stomach. They’re untrained, just dumb rich kids who thought it looked like fun to beat on some homeless guy who was compromised. In about half a minute the asset has half of them on the ground and the other two hightailing it out of there as fast as they possible can.

          “Get the fuck out of here,” he grunts. He kicks at one, not hard, just enough to get his attention. “Get _out_ of here and never touch one of us ever again.”

          The kid just nods frantically as he scrambles to his feet. He tugs on his buddy’s arm until he moans feebly, but drunkenly gets up. The asset growls at them until they are far out of his sight.

          After they’re gone, the asset collapses almost immediately onto the side of the road, burying his face in his hands as he hits the curb. What was that? What was any of that?

          His bruises will heal just fine. But the asset is tired and unsettled, and he lost big chunks of his memory again and woke up on the street, and he just wants peace and quiet and rest. The world does not seem to want to give him any of that. He will keep fighting for it anyway, but he’s just…tired.

          The asset takes a long time to get up. He has to wait until his hands stop shaking, and then he realizes that he’s goddamn cold and really, really hungry. The months got hotter and hotter until the asset thought he would live in his own sweat, but as August faded into September, it was colder at night even when the days were still warm. He didn’t know how long he had been laying out there seizing until the boys came by and picked a fight, snapping him out of it as his fighting instincts reared their head, but he knows that his blacked-out self must have been experiencing something very, very bad. He wakes up a lot of times now feeling like he just threw up, or like he’s just seeing the sun for the first time since he was last blacked in. He doesn’t know where to even begin to seek help.

          After a long while, he thinks he should find somewhere to sleep for the night. He’s freezing and he’s tired and he lost his blanket sometime two blackouts ago, but he doesn’t have the energy to find somewhere safe to sleep, let alone find something warm to do it under. He’s hungry and he craves the morning.

          In the end he finds an unoccupied bench where the trees open up towards the river, and he falls asleep listening to the sound of the rushing water. He wonders how long it will take before he knows himself again. Sometimes he feels like he only really knows himself when he’s finding and executing all of his old handlers and agents throughout the years, turning all of HYDRA’s training and manipulation in on them again. He’s good at fighting. He’s best when his hands are stained red.

          The asset falls asleep. He spends a long time dreaming that somebody’s calling for him, but it’s not any name he recognizes even though he still knows who they’re calling out for. In his dreams, he comes home.

 

          He wakes up because somebody’s watching him. They aren’t touching him, or making any noise—in fact, there’s still nothing but the sound of the river rushing behind him. There aren’t even any cars around. He opens his eyes and the sun has just begun to touch the horizon and he looks into a pair of beautifully baby blue eyes.

          It’s a strange word, he thinks. Beautiful. He can’t remember ever thinking it before, not unless he was describing the smoothness of a kill or the feel of fresh air on his skin after a very, very long time underground in Soviet base. But they are. Beautiful.

          He tests the word out on his tongue, a mumble around his heavy heavy mouth. Amazingly, the man that those eyes belong to begins to laugh.

          “What was that, Buck?”

          And now the asset knows that something is very, very wrong. And he knows the man, too. He blinks for a long moment, trying to right the world again, but it stays stubbornly strange and unknowable. The asset sits up.

          “Steve,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [one day robots will cry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3rEievsrCk) :)
> 
> thanks so much for reading! [i'm here on tumblr](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/147540294515)
> 
> xoxox


	2. a long day without you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve sighs. He hesitates. Then he says in a low voice, “Do you know me at all?”
> 
> The asset looks back at him on a stiff neck. He looks at him for a long time, studying everything about him. It feels wrong. His eyes are telling him to look a few inches down and his arms are telling him a weight that is one hundred pounds lighter and his bones are telling him to go to him. His body knows him. But the asset doesn’t know him at all past a name on a file and a list of last known locations.
> 
> He says, “You’re the man from the bridge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for: light mentions of what happened to bucky in HYDRA, touches of cigarette smoking, and absolutely zero coping.
> 
> xoxox

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          “What was that, Buck?”

          The man sitting across from the asset is relaxed as ever, as though he hasn’t just sent the asset’s brain scrambling into overdrive. Now his very very blue eyes are glimmering, but they’re not anything like tears. The man seems to be…waiting for something.

          Oh. The asset _knows_ him. He straightens up abruptly and holds very still in case he decides to attack. But the man is just sitting there, cross-legged on the grass. His hands are resting on his lap, but the asset can see the tenseness in his shoulders. If the asset fights, the man will undoubtedly fight back.

          He’s not fighting though. He’s unarmed and open, and he’s letting the asset know it.

          “Steve,” the asset blurts out.

          He looks surprised, eyes widening. He looks…hopeful. Or getting there, at least. The asset doesn’t even know where that came from really—he may know him, but the familiarity isn’t there.

          “You’re Steven Rogers,” says the asset before the other can say anything. He wants this back on track. Steven Rogers’s bright eyebrows lift up on his forehead. The asset doesn’t mean to say it then, but the words tumble out like instinct, because these are the words that are meant to follow that name: “My mission is to subdue, capture, and bring you in. Alias: Captain America. Nickname: Steve. Mission is fast, strong, and well trained. Last seen in Washington, D.C.” The asset pauses and course-corrects. Delicately, he says, “Last seen in city unknown. Known bases include: D.C. and Manhattan. You are armed and dangerous.”

          He’s not armed, but he is dangerous. He’s not armed with anything that isn’t concealed, anyway, but HYDRA always said his only weapon is his shield so the asset doubts he has a gun.

          Now Steve looks vaguely amused.

          “Did you memorize that just for me?” he says. There’s a touch of sadness to his face now too, along with the amusement. The asset wonders why it’s making his heart beat harder, because he knows that it is. This is all wrong.

          “I memorized that because that is my mission,” says the asset.

          Steve just regards him. His eyes sweep over him easily, like he’s not afraid or on guard, even though the asset knows he’s both those things. He can see it in the tense lines of his shoulders and the set of his angled jaw.

          “Then why aren’t you fighting me?” Steve says. He tilts his head to the side. “Why did you pull me out of the Potomac?”

          “I don’t know,” the asset says stiffly. That’s wrong, too.

          “Yes you do,” Steve insists.

          “Where are we?” the asset interrupts him flatly. “How did you find me here?”

          Now Steve’s eyebrows are knitting together.

          “I thought _you_ came looking for _me_ ,” he says. He leans forward so his elbows rest on his knees as he spreads his arms, a desperate note creeping into his voice. “You’re two Boroughs outside of Avengers base. You’re one away from Brooklyn. Where have you _been_ , Bucky?”

          “Don’t call me that,” the asset snaps. “I don’t know who that is.”

          Steve looks pained. “Buck—”

          The asset gets to his feet so he’s towering over Steve as he growls now. Steve leans back, and he’s careful to keep his face smoothed out and his expression calm. The asset knows he isn’t, but that doesn’t change anything, because now he knows that Steve won’t fight him. He won’t even get his guard up.

          Who the hell is Bucky?

          “Where am I?” he hisses.

          Steve blinks at him. The asset thinks maybe he’s trying to calm down, too—or to calm _him_ down. It doesn’t work; it feels like Steve’s trying to show a wild animal that he’s no threat, and that just makes the asset angrier.

          This is new, too. He doesn’t know anger. He doesn’t know much of anything anymore. He knows how to submit, and how to be deadly, and how to make everything in him go quiet. Then he met Steve in D.C., and he felt redness in his veins for the first time in a long, long time. It wasn’t a good feeling but he wanted more of it anyway. He felt less like a machine, and more…human. The asset isn’t supposed to want things; weapons aren’t supposed to want things. But the asset did anyway. He wanted to feel red.

          “You’re in Queens,” Steve says calmly. “Near JFK. You weren’t trying to fly somewhere, were you? They would never let you on a flight.”

          If he’s trying for levity, it doesn’t work. The asset sits down heavily on the bench again and crosses his arms.

          “I wasn’t looking for you,” he says. He turns his head away. “I wasn’t looking for anything.”

          Steve sighs. He hesitates. Then he says in a low voice, “Do you know me at all?”

          The asset looks back at him on a stiff neck. He looks at him for a long time, studying everything about him. It feels wrong. His eyes are telling him to look a few inches down and his arms are telling him a weight that is one hundred pounds lighter and his bones are telling him to go to him. His body knows him. But the asset doesn’t know him at all past a name on a file and a list of last known locations.

          He says, “You’re the man from the bridge.”

          Steve’s jaw grits together; the asset can see it work.

          “You know that’s not what I mean,” says Steve. “You’re no fool.”

          He’s right, of course. Subterfuge and playing dumb won’t get him anywhere.

          “You’re Steve,” relents the asset.

          “You remembered me,” says Steve. He speaking in that measured voice again and the asset still doesn’t know which of their benefit it’s for.

          The asset wants to refute what he said, but he can’t; his own words echo back to him: _“But I knew him.”_

_“But I knew him.”_

_“But I knew him.”_

          “No I didn’t,” the asset insists. He finds that that’s true, too. “Not…really.”

          Steve blinks at him. The asset realizes what he just let slip. Except he’s a highly trained Soviet spy, so he doesn’t let anything slip that he doesn’t kind of want the other party to know.

          “What do you mean not really?” Steve says urgently, leaning forward on his knees again. The asset blinks at him. Steve sighs. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” he asks, looking around them. There’s no one directly nearby, but they’re still out in public where people can see them.

          “There’s nowhere else,” says the asset. Also true. Nowhere is safe for him now. “I don’t stay anywhere for too long and I avoid the inside, if I can.”

          He knows Steve understands without him having to explain it. The asset doesn’t like cameras. He doesn’t like TVs and newspapers and other people. Steve included.

          “We have to talk,” Steve says.

          He sounds more than desperate now—begging? The asset doesn’t understand. He isn’t touching Steve with hot wires or tearing into his skin to see how fast he’ll heal or attaching probes to his brain, so why is Steve _begging_? The asset doesn’t even have any leverage.

          Except for himself. Except for answers.

          “Please,” Steve adds.

          The asset just looks at him.

          “You know me,” Steve says again carefully. “And I know you. Shouldn’t we try to work that out?”

          The asset’s jaw ticks. He doesn’t like what Steve’s saying. He sounds the way his handlers sometimes did when they didn’t feel like hurting him to make him understand, so they tried to reason out his questions. Usually, they just ran him in circles until he gave up without any more clue than he had begun with. Eventually he stopped asking, because the more he asked, the more likely they were to hurt him later. But Steve seems like he has a point. He’s letting the asset know the truth, and the truth is a valuable, valuable thing. The asset hasn’t had more than dirt and his own body in so long.

          “I don’t go anywhere,” the asset says.

          They both know what defeat sounds like.

          “I have a place,” says Steve, getting to his feet now. “It’s only a few hours’ walk.”

          “Avengers Tower,” the asset says. He stands too, although he hasn’t made up his mind about following him yet so they just stand there watching each other across the short distance. “That’s five hours’ walk from here.”

          He doesn’t say it in complaint or protest, it’s just a fact. He walked all the way here from Florida, after all, with plenty of detours to go westward and all over the country as well. Five hours is nothing.

          “Not the Tower, but close,” says Steve. “Come on.”

          The asset doesn’t move. He crosses his arms over his chest.

          “I can’t trust you,” he says, narrowing his eyes at him.

          Steve shrugs. “I can’t trust you either.”

          The asset stays in their standstill for a long moment. Then the same strange bubbling feeling from the fight climbs back up his stomach, into his chest, up his throat. The asset opens his mouth and—a laugh escapes.

          He doesn’t immediately get what it is. Then he realizes he’s _laughing_ , and it’s been so long that he starts to laugh _harder_. He laughs so long that he doubles over and clutches at his stomach.

          Abruptly, he realizes that he’s taken his eyes off of Steve, which could be a fatal mistake. His hysteria dies down immediately and he straightens again. Steve’s got a slight smile on his face like he’s totally confused, and it makes the asset want to laugh again.

          Instead he gestures his flesh arm out and says, “Lead the way, Captain.”

 

          They don’t talk that much as they walk, at least for the first twenty minutes or so. Then Steve starts to get chatty.

          “How did you end up in New York if you weren’t looking for me?” he says, twisting his head around to look at the asset beside him.

          The asset says nothing and just blinks at him. Not only does he not really have an answer past “running from the law,” because he wasn’t really _doing_ anything in particular unless Steve counts stealing and looking at a lot of water—but he isn’t sure how much information he should be giving up just yet. Somehow telling Steve details about how he hides out seems like a red flag, so he keeps his mouth shut.

          Steve nods slowly like the asset said something really deep.

          “Okay, that subject is off-limits,” he says. “How about we try something else? What do they call you?”

          The asset blinks at him again. He doesn’t really understand the question.

          “Call me?” he echoes.

          “Yeah,” says Steve, shrugging one shoulder. He leans his hip out like he’s going to jostle the asset with it, but he flinches and jumps away from him, baring his teeth ferally. Steve pretends like nothing happened as he continues on with his questioning, “You don’t like using his name. So what did they call you?”

          He’s talking about his imaginary Bucky, the asset assumes. The asset must look like someone he once knew. He guesses he can see it; past the muscles and the metal arm, his face is just a face, with brown hair and blue eyes and nothing to stand out, really. He’s pretty generic. He can see where maybe Steve might get confused—he must have met a lot of people in his long life. But the asset doesn’t know anybody named Bucky.

          “They don’t call me anything,” he says, nonplussed.

          Steve stares at him. “They didn’t give you a name?”

          The asset shrugs. “I’m a tool to be used,” he says matter-of-factly. “Tools don’t have names. Just sniper rifles and handguns.”

          He’s pretty proud of that joke, actually, and something wilts in his chest when Steve doesn’t laugh. Laughing is nice.

          “You don’t have a _name_?” Steve says. He sounds strangled now. “You’re not a _tool_. You’re a _person_.”

          The asset blinks at him. He doesn’t understand.

          “I’m a tool,” he says again. “Tools don’t have names.”

          Steve looks at him for a very long time. They’re still walking, and a few times the asset has to tug on Steve’s arm to get him to walk around poles or people coming in the other direction. The asset doesn’t know what to say, because he doesn’t know what caused this long, long look. He doesn’t know what it means, either. His handlers were not silent. They were always _something_ , and those somethings are all that the asset knows how to interpret. Steve is something else altogether.

          (Some _one_ else. The distinction seems important for Steve.)

          Abruptly, in the asset’s opinion, Steve sighs.

          “Is this another one of those things?” Steve says. “Another off-limits subject?”

          The asset relaxes quickly, his tension melting. He nods. Steve grimaces but seems to take it in stride.

          “Can we stop somewhere really quick for something to eat?” he asks instead. He doesn’t seem to mind keeping up most of their conversation. “You can wait outside while I order, if you’d like. I just haven’t eaten yet this morning. I planned to before my morning jog, but then I stumbled on you.”

          The asset knows all about supersoldiers needing extra calories, so he agrees with quick nods of his head. Steve seems relieved. He doesn’t turn into the first place he sees, though; in fact, they keep walking for another hour before Steve tells him to wait outside while he darts in for a sandwich.

          “This place is really good,” he promises. “Do you want something while I’m in there?”

          The asset doesn’t trust him _quite_ that much yet. He shakes his head. Steve disappears inside with a tinkle of the bell over the door.

          There are people outside, talking and laughing together. Some are alone, some are on cell phones. The asset watches a couple stroll by holding hands, and he catches a snippet of their conversation.

          “…I just snapped,” the first girl says sadly. “I’m sorry. I know how much last night’s dinner meant to you.”

          The other girl, the blonde one, moves her free hand to push a strand of the brunette’s hair out of her face.

          “It’s okay,” the blonde girl promises. “My parents are total assholes, you know? I’m just happy you finally got to meet them.”

          “Yeah, and totally happy you finally got to do it in your childhood bed.” The brown-haired girl smirks. The blonde one tosses her head back to laugh.

          “You make me happy,” she says, her bright hair shimmering in the midday sun. “Like, really happy.”

          The brunette smiles at her. Then she leans in and kisses her softly.

          “I love you.”

          “Love you too, beautiful.”

          The rest of their conversation fades away as they walk by the asset without a glance. He watches them go and wonders when he learned anger and laughter and the word _beautiful_. He can, he realizes, trace all of these things back to Steve, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He feels alive for the first time since the bridge, though, and he wants to feel more of that, so he leans back against the wall he’s on and feels the bricks under his hands where he’s tucked them behind his back, and he feels the sun on his face, and he feels the day stretching out before him.

          “I’m alive,” he wonders aloud to himself. He wonders it so hard that he says it again. _I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive_.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          Bucky blinks awake in the middle of a crowded street. His heart is pounding as he’s thrown back into his body. Bucky hates these days, where he wakes up when he’s already awake and standing somewhere and his mind has to catch up to his body already functioning. He would almost rather spend the rest of the day in a fugue state and just wake up tomorrow with the rising sun.

          He looks around, wondering where he is. His hood isn’t even up, so he tugs it over his head quickly. Shit, is he captured or something? What’s he doing out here where anyone could see him?

          Bucky checks his wrists and ankles quickly, but there’s no immediate sign of capture—no handcuffs or ankle monitors or anything to suggest he’s not alone. As he steps out further into the sidewalk to get a better handle on where he is, he glances up to see what building he’s stopped in front of. It’s a sandwich shop, and with a pang Bucky realizes he knows this place. It used to be an arcade. His stomach hollows out unpleasantly.

          Bucky spots a newspaper bin right next to a street sign and heads over. He shoves his hands in his pockets and comes out with some spare change from the last time he went rummaging for coins, which he does anywhere he can find them. Nobody ever notices or cares when they lose coins, but for him it’s a stop at the ice cream store or a drop-in at the wrap place. Sometimes it’s candy. Once it was hairties, which he finds with satisfaction he still has most of.

          The date in the corner of the newspaper tells him he’s been in fugue for less than a day. That’s not so bad, he reasons. Especially since he remembers then that he was last awake in the middle of a goddamn episode; someone had set off fireworks or their car had backfired or something, and he had just _lost_ it. He kept tugging on his hair and pressing his fingers into his cheeks until they hurt from his own stubble. He was just panicked, like he was back in the warzone except ten times worse because he knew he wasn’t, so it was harder to pinpoint where the threat was. Admittedly, coming out of an episode halfway through was pretty nice, even if he _had_ woken up out in public, standing smack in the middle of a bright and crowded sidewalk. And _why_ was he just standing in front of the wall with his hood down like he didn’t even care who noticed him, he had no idea. He was usually a lot more careful than that when he was… _him_. The other him.

          He looks around and squints up the street sign. He’s not in the same place he was last night, but he’s pretty sure it’s the same Borough. This is honestly the last time he comes to the city; there’s too many people and way too many things that could be bombs (too many things he thinks are bombs).

          He’s just looking around for someplace that will help orient him when he hears from behind him, “Bu—Hey, you. You alright?”

          Christ. Bucky would know that voice _anywhere_.

          He whips around in a whirlwind of hair and open sweatshirt flaps and breathed out all his air at once. Tears climb their way face up into his eyes. His throat closes up immediately, but he still manages to croak out one word—the only important word in his vocabulary.

          “Steve?”

          There’s no way it could be Steve. Steve’s—well, not dead, even Bucky knew that from the way his perfect fucking face is plastered up on every street corner from here to Pacific Beach. Both he and Not-He had seemed to mutually agree that they weren’t going to go looking for something that would make things worse, and Steve is definitely the golden card holder of the top slot in that category.

          But Bucky can’t help it. He sees Steve—his Steve, his _Steve_ —and all his breath rushes out of him, and he’s just left gaping. What are the odds, Bucky thinks in awe, of them meeting at random?

          As he looks at him with his heart stopped, Steve shifts between his feet uncomfortably. Then he seems to notice the tears in Bucky’s eyes, because it’s like he forgets himself completely and he strides forward. Bucky hugs him like a wild bear, clutching desperately at his back. Steve startles, like he thought Bucky was going to attack him. After a hesitant moment, Steve’s arms come around him too. He pulls out quickly—too quickly for Bucky’s liking.

          “Steve?” he says again, quieter now.

          Steve touches his face with one hand, tentatively, like he might be swatted off. His finger brush against Bucky’s cheek.

          “Are you okay?” he says. “Did something happen while I was inside?”

          That’s just about the weirdest question Steve could possibly ask him. Bucky’s brain shuts down, completely at a loss for relevant retorts. “Did something happen?” like it’s not the first time they’re seeing each other in a lifetime or two. Well—six months for Steve. Bucky saw _those_ news stories too. His throat closes up just thinking about it—in his fugue, he almost killed—

          He shakes the thoughts away. This time when he tries to speak, he just manages, “What?”

          Steve takes his hand away from his cheek.

          “Did something happen?” he repeats, slower. His eyes are fast assessing all over Bucky’s face. “You were fine when I went in, and now you look like you saw a ghost. Which—” he snorts—“is not entirely outside our realm of possibility.”

          He looks like he just told a tremendous joke. Bucky just doesn’t _get_ it.

          “It’s me,” he says dumbly.

          “I know,” says Steve. He seems to be stiffening now; Bucky knows what it looks like when Steve gets his guard up, and he’s definitely doing it now. He steps a good few feet away from Bucky. “Sorry for touching you,” he says tautly.

          Bucky’s brain fast-forwards. He woke up on a crowded street in the middle of the day—and Steve is looking at him like their meeting isn’t news—and he just _woke up_.

          “Oh, fuck,” he says.

          Steve looks startled now.

          “I—I don’t—” Bucky says. He swallows. “There’s gaps in my memories. I don’t know what’s happening.”

          Steve just looks at him for a long moment. Then he begins to nod.

          “Okay,” he says slowly, like this is just another thing to pack away in his pocket and he’s already ready to deal with it later and take it in stride now, “okay. How about we go back to my place near Avengers Tower, like we talked about? We can sort through things more there. This is—not the place.”

          He’s talking all slow and careful, like he’s talking to a wild animal or a frightened child. Bucky doesn’t know which is a more accurate descriptor. He just nods and looks around the street, because Steve’s right—this is about the worst place _ever_ to be doing this. They start to walk down the street together, Steve keeping a couple of inches between them, and Bucky’s grateful for the space to breathe. Steve always understood him in a way that Bucky never had to put into words.

          Bucky gets four hours. He gets four hours with Steve, wherein he doesn’t answer Steve’s questions because he doesn’t _have_ the answers, and eventually Steve gives up and just starts talking about nothing important like the baseball game on the radio earlier and someone named Wanda who keeps coming over and breaking his toaster. Then it only takes one—just one passing report about a still-missing businessman that disappeared two weeks ago, and Bucky remembers him (and a gag in his mouth and a gun to his head and his body in a river) and he strains to remember more because his stomach is sour and only penance can save him—and as he strains to remember, he gets what he wants: He’s gone.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          The asset lost four hours. He’s walking beside Steve again, who’s mid-story about something he doesn’t understand because he came in too late. The asset stumbles, just a little. It’s enough for Steve’s hand to shoot out to steady him, and the asset leaps back. He bares his teeth at him, trying to assess any threat that’s nearby while still keeping an eye on Steve (who’s mercifully not trying to touch him anymore) before he accepts that they’re not currently in danger, and he straightens up again.

          “I’m sorry,” says Steve, retracting his arm. “You were fine with it a few minutes ago, I—I didn’t think.”

          The asset wants to explain that that’s because he wasn’t _him_ a few minutes ago. He was blacked out, like somebody who’s had too much to drink and suddenly doesn’t mind dancing on tables and going home with strangers that otherwise should never be touched. He wants to explain that a few minutes ago, he might have been somebody else.

          But the asset doesn’t know Steve, really. He doesn’t trust him. So he just steps slightly closer to him, lifts his chin, and says, “It’s fine.”

          Steve raises his eyebrows. Then he keeps walking. It doesn’t take much effort for the asset to keep up with him.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          Steve’s place near Avengers Tower is strange. He doesn’t seem to have gleaned that he lost Bucky for an hour or so there, so Bucky guesses that his fugue-self didn’t do anything strange—or at least, anything stranger than the way Bucky’s been acting since Steve found him this morning.

          Steve explains that he doesn’t live in the Tower most of the time, even though he’s got a whole floor to himself. He prefers the peace and quiet of an apartment just down the block, especially since the guy who owns the Tower apparently has a robot or something that monitors their every move (Bucky thinks it sounds creepy, but Steve seems mostly cool with it so he guesses that he just doesn’t understand all the finer details yet; he hopes he’ll remember to ask at a more opportune time).

          The apartment’s rundown and small. Bucky thinks it reminds him of their place in Brooklyn, but he doesn’t say it yet. He doesn’t know how much Steve trusts him, and more importantly he doesn’t trust _himself_ to remember everything just yet. He doesn’t want Steve to get his hopes up that Bucky is his old self again. Even if he gets his memories back, he’s not sure he’ll _ever_ find who he used to be.

          Steve throws his jacket over the couch when they walk in. Bucky hangs his more neatly up on the coat rack by the door, then does the same with Steve’s jacket since he’s already hanging things up. When he turns around, Steve’s smiling at him. Bucky’s own in return is much more faltering.

          “What?” he asks.

          Steve glances away, then back almost shyly. “Nothing,” he says. “You just—Never mind.”

          Bucky tilts his head curiously. “I just what?” he says.

          “Nothing,” Steve says more emphatically. This time he claps his hands together to draw Bucky’s attention away from the subject, and though the diversion is plain, Bucky lets it draw him towards new conversation regardless. “Do you want something to drink?”

          Bucky blinks steadily at him. “Does it do anything for you?” he wonders.

          Steve looks at him for a long moment before he begins to laugh. Bucky just watches him with a wry little smile on his face.

          “I forgot,” says Steve, grinning over at him. “I was just being polite. I forgot we both have the serum in us.”

          Bucky holds his arms out and mimes injecting himself with an invisible needle. Then he aims an invisible gun at his head and shoots, complete with exaggerated noises and movements.

          “No more getting drunk for us!” he says loudly, throwing his arms out.

          Steve grins. “Guess not. Water, then?”

          Bucky hasn’t been properly hydrated in days. He nods, maybe too enthusiastically. Steve holds a finger up at him and disappears into another room, which Bucky assumes to be the kitchen.

          While Steve’s gone, he makes himself at home. He’s never needed permission to be in Steve’s space, and he figures he doesn’t need it now; and if he does, he’ll hardly feel awkward getting reprimanded by Steve, anyway. Even if he does say something, it’s not like they didn’t spend more than enough time teasing one another in their youths. Maybe it will hardly feel like any time has passed at all. Bucky’s heart pumps painfully at the thought.

          When Steve returns, Bucky’s sitting on his couch. He’s putting on the picture of ease, his knees spread and his arms flopped out along the back of the couch. Steve puts his glass of water on a coaster on the end table next to him, then takes the armchair across the coffee table from him like he thinks Bucky might lunge and attack him or something—or like they’re all formalities, two professionals at a business meeting. Bucky folds his arms back onto his lap. For a long moment, they do nothing but stare.

          Then Steve leans forwards in his chair, his hands clutching his water glass. He sounds pleading when he asks, “What _happened_ to you?”

          It’s clear that Steve’s been holding that in for hours, maybe all day. But he couldn’t have picked a worse starting point to launch into: Bucky _hates_ that question. So very, very many things happened to him. He scoffs lowly.

          “What happened to me? Well, what do you want to hear about first?” he says. He knows he sounds aggressive and hateful, but even though it’s aimed at Steve, none of it is for him. “The way they beat me? How they tortured me? Do you want to hear in detail how my arm ripped off when I fell from the train? Or how they pieced me back together the way they wanted? All the kills I made? How they shaped me into _this_? Are you wondering how they turned me into the perfect fucking weapon?”

          He’s shouting by the end of it, although he started off measured. He realizes he’s shaking, too, his fingers dangerously close to shattering his water even though his metal hand is clenched on his lap, only his flesh fingers allowed near anything so breakable.

          He watches Steve swallow.

          “Bucky,” he says, so sadly, so wretched. His eyes widen and he sounds a little more normal, a little more like Steve, when he says, “Sorry.”

          Bucky falters. “Sorry?” he repeats. “For what?”

          Steve squints at him like he can’t tell if Bucky’s being serious or not.

          “For…for using that name,” he says slowly. “Didn’t you ask me not to—”

          “I don’t know what I said to you when you first found me,” says Bucky, leaning forwards as well. He sets his water down just in case. “But I’m still… _Me_.”

          He’s not sure if it’s a lie. The Bucky Barnes that Steve knew is not the same one now sitting on his couch; he doesn’t know how to laugh easily, or act like family, or make him smile. He has his face and his heart and some of his memories, but is that enough, he wonders, to make it him? Is he still himself if he changes without Steve?

          Truth or lie, Steve seems relieved by the sentiment. He exhales audibly and leans back in his chair, more relaxed, more comfortable around him.

          “You are?” he says, like he’s just making sure.

          It makes the maybe-lie harder to give a second time, but Bucky nods anyway. There are a lot of things he’d lie about to keep Steve’s conscience clear. Sometimes just by omission.

          “I want to help you,” Steve says. He sounds so honest—Bucky doesn’t just believe he _wants_ to. He believes he _can_. Then he remembers who he is, what he’s done, and he’s not sure any of it’s possible anymore—even for somebody like Steve.

          “I just want to be me again,” Bucky says after a long time. _I just want this to not be a dream. I want to feel real again._

          Steve reaches his hand out over the space between them. It’s an offering, and it’s there even if Bucky doesn’t want to take it. It’s still there even if Bucky wants to take it but doesn’t want to take his hand.

          Bucky scoots close enough that he can clasp Steve’s hand in his fist. It doesn’t feel like an agreement. It feels like home.

          “Then I’ll help you,” Steve promises. All his attention is on Bucky, but it doesn’t burn like he expected. “Whatever I can, however long it takes. I’ll help you be you again, Buck.”

          Bucky wants so painfully to believe him.

 

          They get through the afternoon in a strange kind of peace accord. Steve moves quietly around him, trying not to startle or upset him, trying to act normal when Bucky can tell all he wants to do is make sure he’s not going to pounce. Bucky keeps his eyes averted because he wants to make sure he doesn’t look at Steve too much when all he wants is to drink the sight of him in, and in doing so he doesn’t look at him enough. He stands against the wall near the corner and figures out where all the rooms go just by looking and listening. He doesn’t leave the living room. His eyes find all the exits.

          By nightfall they’re both tense and Steve’s got this awful forced smile pasted on his face. Bucky just slinks around, willing his paranoia to go away; even with his back against the wall, he can’t shake the feeling of people watching. Of people _knowing_. Now Steve knows, so that’s two people in on the secret. The secret that he’s even alive. It feels like one person too many.

          Bucky thought that once he found Steve, things would somehow magically go back to the way they had been in 1944, the last time he— _Bucky_ —saw him. Well, he wished more than thought. He’s not surprised but just as chagrined to find things tense and odd. They’re strangers now, two people who want so badly to be around one another but don’t know how to act. In Steve’s case, Bucky guesses he also has to worry about being murdered by an ex-assassin; he’s already tried it once, all those months ago—right before he saved his life. In Bucky’s case, he has a weird mix of rightful fear of discovery and completely baseless worry that somehow Steve’s going to report him or something and he’ll wind up either in police custody or—worse—back in HYDRA’s hands. The idea is ludicrous—logically, he’s aware of that—but the thought of being in handcuffs and under anyone’s thumb is enough to get him shaking, and that’s enough to keep the fear burning.

          Steve gets a phone call around one in the morning. Bucky guesses that being a secret agent doesn’t leave him a lot of room to work only within business hours. Steve excuses himself where they’ve been in the living room not speaking to each other, Steve reading a book and Bucky lurking against the far wall—he probably is afraid of sleeping with Bucky around. He goes into the kitchen.

          Bucky isn’t trying to listen. It’s just that he has really good (enhanced) hearing, and Steve’s phone call is the only noise in the apartment right now.

          “…been inside all day,” says Steve, which immediately peaks Bucky’s interest. That’s a lie; he’s covering for him, he realizes. He just doesn’t know Steve’s endgame. “No, I know. No…Yes, I’ll let you know if I hear or see anything. It’s just that…” He sighs. In Bucky’s mind he’s pinching the bridge of his nose the way he used to.

          Bucky’s busy marveling to himself that he remembered that small detail, so he misses the end of the call. He looks up when he feels Steve reenter the room.

          He’s leaning against the door jamb, watching Bucky. He doesn’t say anything about who was on the phone.

          “I need to get some sleep,” says Steve. Bucky nods infinitesimally but doesn’t move. Is Steve keeping him on lockdown, or kicking him out? But Steve just gestures minutely towards the couch. “You can stay there if you—if you want,” he finishes, but Bucky isn’t sure that’s what he was going to say.

          He smiles, not amused. “You’re asking if I’m staying,” he says.

          Steve looks away. “I’m not here to make you do anything,” he says. Then he sighs and looks back at him, gaze steady and cutting deep. “I hope you stay, yes. But that’s not my decision.”

          Bucky nods, his eyes now on the floor.  Steve’s giving him choices. It doesn’t change the fact that when Steve walks away, Bucky hears the distinct sound of his bedroom door locking behind him. Can’t be too safe, he supposes wryly.

          Bucky does not go to sleep. The clock ticks to one-thirty, then to two. It reaches half past before he curls up in the corner he’s been occupying, the place where he can see the whole room and has easy access to the window if he needs. He wishes he still had his blanket.

          When he closes his eyes, it takes much shorter than it usually does for him to drift off.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          The asset awakes on an unfamiliar floor.

          He’s used to this, of course, but the confusing part—the part that has him sitting up, eyes tracking the room for any signs of life or a trap—is that the floor is carpeted. Not rotted wood. Not concrete. Carpet.

          The asset’s on his feet in the next second. His gaze sweeps the room for any immediate signs of where he is. There’s an old couch near him with a television set up on a stand in front of it, plenty of DVDs and games shoved into the shelves. A bookcase is pushed up against one wall, books and CDs alike littering it, a stereo set up on a shelf near eye-height. Several rooms split off from the main one, but it’s dark and the asset can’t see into any of them from his position.

          A quick check ascertains that he isn’t chained down to the wall or floor. He glances uneasily at the window, but the view is high, high up from the street below. There’s an apartment complex across the street facing him, a tall building that stretches way higher than his window and is shaped oddly, but he sees no immediate threats to his safety. He keeps close to the walls and away from the glass as he edges into the room, both as a precaution against someone sneaking up behind him and to keep away from snipers that might be targeting him.

          He creeps towards the door on the far left, opting to check all the rooms in a line. It leads out into the hallway outside the apartment; after a quick glance in either direction, he finds that nobody is leaping out for him. The lights aren’t even on. He ducks back inside, pressing his back to the door and doing another scan around. Nothing has changed; he moves to the next door.

          The kitchen is actually just through an empty arch that leads into the next room, but he treats it like an entirely different space even though he can still see into the living room from over the counters. There’s nothing here either, but the asset starts pulling doors open at random. He isn’t even really sure what he’s checking for—bugs? A camera? A bomb?

          He doesn’t find any of those things. It just looks like a normal apartment, really, as though he was just dropped into somebody else’s life, somebody with crackers in their pantry and silverware in their drawers. Normal things for normal people.

          He is halfway through his assessment, pulling open the fridge to make sure there is nothing sinister inside, when he hears a door open from out where the living room leads off into a short hallway. The asset freezes. Then he quickly shuts the door and scampers up onto the counters, pressing himself as small as possible back into the corner. It isn’t an ideal hiding spot, but he won’t be immediately noticeable if someone enters the kitchen, either, unless they turn on the light.

          There are footsteps in the hall now. He sees someone appear in the living room from over the counters, just a broad back, nothing else distinguishable in the dark. Then the person turns around and heads back down the hall. The asset hears another door opening and shutting, and someone calling softly for a name he doesn’t know. If this person is looking for backup, the asset will have _two_ targets to take down instead of one; he immediately begins reassessing the situation he’s in, figuring out new fighting and exit strategies in the event of a multi-opponent attack, making different plans depending on from where the second person emerges. It’s all split-second thought processes and prepared instincts, second-nature to something like the asset.

          The first person comes back down the hallway, and the asset holds his breath so he isn’t making any noise at all. He sees the person step into the kitchen, and a hand stretching out towards the wall beside the non-door. He tenses. The light turns on.

          He and the man are making eye contact and the asset already has his arm held out. He holds it like a weapon because it is one—he is one. If he had a gun he would be holding it out instead, but he doesn’t, so he makes do looking as threatening as he can.

          Amazingly, the man chuckles. He holds up his hands so the asset can see he’s weaponless, but he’s still _laughing_. The asset grits his teeth and sinks deeper into his crouch, a feral animal ready to pounce.

          “What are you doing?” the man says, stepping further into the room. “Looking for a midnight snack?”

          He sounds…not quite like he’s serious. The asset doesn’t understand what to make of it, so he growls instead. The man just quirks his eyebrows. Nothing about him is familiar, not his blond hair, not his kind blue eyes, not the way he holds himself like a man whose toughness is all bravado (which is strange, since the asset can see that he’s physically fit—fitter than fit).

          “Bucky? What’s up?”

          “Who the hell are you?” the asset snarls. “Where am I? What did you do with my weapons?”

          The guy looks pretty harmless, in sleep pants and a shirt so tight the asset knows he’s not packing (but he is strong, so the asset makes a mental note that that’s something to watch out for too) but he doesn’t let down his guard just in case the guy lunges for the asset’s stolen weapons in a drawer suddenly or something.

          “You gave them to me earlier,” the man says. His brow furrows now, and he stands a little straighter. He seems to be just beginning to understand that the asset is a threat, which is strange in and of itself. Most people are terrified just to look at him; it’s obvious that he’s a frightening thing, something that can and will hurt them if he’s so bid.

          “Don’t lie to me,” the asset growls, and he flings himself off the counter.

          The man side-steps him, and he cries out, “Bucky!” but the asset ignores his further cries for help and slips past him, landing hard on his shoulder on the floor and rolling out into the living room. He rolls straight to his feet and flips the couch over, crashing it—and the table in front of it—to the floor.

          “Where the fuck did you stash my weapons?” the asset yells. “I’ll tear this whole fucking base apart!”

          He does, reaching for the nearest drawer on the end table next to where the couch had been. He tears the drawer clean out of the table, and it clatters to the floor. Various small things spill out—scissors, a candle, some gum—but not his weapons. The asset snatches up the scissors just in case it comes to that and shoves past the man, who’s just standing there watching him tear up his apartment with his eyes wide with alarm. It just further proves to the asset: This is a base, and he’s a plant. Anyone else would be freaking out about their furniture and their home.

          He shoulders his way into the first room he sees, nearly ripping the door clean off its hinges. It’s a bedroom, and a pretty nice one too; the wide bed in the center is lit softly with the glow of the standing lamp next to it. The asset bypasses it and tears open the closet’s sliding doors. He starts grabbing boxes on the shelf above where clothes are hanging, taking down suits as he throws the box to his feet where they clatter open—shoes, shoes, some pictures, a notebook—still no weapons. He turns around again and brandishes the scissors at the man, who’s now standing in the open doorway to his bedroom.

          He looks calmer now, stalking purposefully towards the asset. He touches the asset almost gently, on the arm, and the asset rips it away and slams the man up against the wall.

          “Who are you?” he snarls. “Where the fuck did you bring me?”

          With what seems a gargantuan effort, the man ceases his struggle. The asset releases his elbow on his windpipe and pins him by the chest instead, keeping him held while letting him breathe.

          “It’s me,” the man pants, “It’s—I’m Steve. You know me.”

          “Shut up,” the asset snaps. “Where are we?”

          “You know me,” Steve repeats calmly. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes—”

          “Shut up!” the asset says loudly, trying to drown his voice out.

          It doesn’t work; Steve presses on.

          “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. I brought you here, under your own volition. You’ve been here all afternoon. You fell asleep here. You have not been harmed.”

          The calm cadence of his voice combined with the delicate way he speaks eases the asset a little, especially because Steve isn’t fighting back—he never was. The asset steps back a little, scissors still drawn in case Steve was just trying to lull him into a false sense of security. Steve just breathes for a second, eyes watchful on the asset. Steve runs his hand through his hair.

          “Does this happen a lot?” he wonders. “The memory lapses?”

          The asset looks away from him. He says nothing.

          “Right,” Steve sighs. “How are you supposed to answer that, right?”

          The asset shrugs. Steve hums and reaches out for his wrist, the one whose hand is still holding the scissors. The asset flinches and tenses, still holding the scissors out like a knife.

          “It’s okay,” Steve says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

          The asset has heard that before. He doesn’t think it’s ever been actually true.

          Steve reaches out slower this time, and his fingers brush the asset’s wrist for a moment before Steve lowers his arm for him. The asset keeps a tight grip on the scissors, but he lets him. After the asset’s arm is back by his side, Steve steps closer. He brushes his hand up and down the asset’s arm, and it’s his flesh one, so he can feel it— _really_ feel it, not just through the temperature and pressure scans of his metal arm. He shivers even though it’s not cold. Then he flinches.

          “What’s wrong?” Steve asks.

          His voice is low and gentle, so the asset answers.

          “This is an involuntary function,” the asset says. Steve doesn’t ask him _what_. He just nods like he already understands. “I do not like not being in control.”

          _Of my own body_ goes unsaid. Steve keeps nodding like he understands that, too.

          “You’re safe here,” Steve promises. “You’re in control.”

          Except he’s not, not really. Steve is rubbing his arm now, not just brushing it with the back of his hand, and the asset tenses so hard he can feel his back straining. But he doesn’t step away. He doesn’t let go of his scissors, either.

          “You’re safe here,” Steve repeats.

          “I’m not safe anywhere,” the asset says stiffly.

          Steve leans his head back so he can look at the asset better. Then he shakes it, just slightly at first.

          “I’m so sorry,” he says. The asset doesn’t get it. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you. It’s my fault.”

          The asset just squints at him. His body is telling him things that he doesn’t understand. Things like: _Reach for him_. Things like: _Hold him_. Things like: _Keep him_. These things feel safe and warm and so unlike the imprisonment commands the asset associates them to be.

          He squints at Steve and his sad eyes, his downturned mouth.

          “Who are you?” he insists.

          “I’m Steve,” Steve says patiently, as though he thinks the asset’s memory lapses are that frequent, or that fast.

          The asset just looks at him. “No,” he says. “Who _are_ you?”

          Steve gazes back at him. The asset feels his hand on his arm, and his other settle on his ribs. Steve tilts his head.

          Steve kisses him. Soft.

          The asset is someone who understands hard, who understands rough, who understands urgency. When Steve kisses him softly, it’s full of things he does _not_ understand, so he turns it into something he does: Firm. Hard. He kisses back because his body tells him to and his body is the only thing he trusts. His body tells him to touch Steve back. The scissors clatter to the floor. The asset pushes Steve against the wall.

          The asset is a kaleidoscope of new feelings. It isn’t difficult to elicit those, because _all_ feelings are new feelings. But these are better than anger, better than confusion, better even than the marvel of having an opinion. This is a fire in his gut, warm hands on his chest (on his face, in his hair); this is a fuzzy head when he doesn’t mind it, this is stars shimmering down to earth around him. The asset didn’t have the words for these things before: Warm. Happy.

          “Beautiful,” he breathes.

          Steve makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a whine. He presses kisses all along the side of the asset’s face until he reaches his neck, and then buries his face there for just a fleeting second before he pulls back. For a moment they just stare at each other.

          “I’ve been wanting to do that since 1926,” Steve breathes.

          The asset’s breaths are coming slow and strange—the word _peaceful_ comes to mind, but there is no such thing; peace only comes after all opponents have been wiped out; peace is the pipe dream for which the asset was engineered.

          But there is Steve. And he feels peaceful.

          “Who…” _am I?_ he tries to say, but it comes out, “…are you?”

          Steve tilts his head, that sad, troubled look crossing his face again.

          “I’m Steve,” he says carefully.

          “The man on the bridge,” the asset says, nodding slightly.

          Steve sighs. “Yes,” he says.

          “But I know you,” says the asset. “From…before the bridge.”

          Steve seems to puzzle over his words for a moment. He drops his hands from the asset’s body, who abruptly wants that warmth again, but he doesn’t seek it. Steve slides away from him. The asset turns to press his back against the now-vacated wall and watches as Steve begins to pace.

          “We knew each other from…from before,” says Steve. He pushes his hands through his hair, and the asset watches them go—do they feel as nice in Steve’s hair as they did in his own? “What do you remember from before HYDRA?”

          The asset blinks at him. Steve stops pacing and looks at him. He’s clearly waiting for something, so the asset does his best to convey why he’s pausing now.

          “There is no Before,” he says gruffly. “I was engineered in HYDRA base for their use.”

          Steve makes that face he did out on the street when the asset said he had no name.

          “You’re not a weapon,” Steve says, frowning at him. “You and me grew up together. Do you remember any of that? We met when we were kids and grew up in Brooklyn together.”

          The asset frowns right back at him. He’s seen kids on the street, but they’re small, and even though they will one day grow into adults, the asset isn’t like that. He doesn’t _age_ like that. He’s a weapon—he looks the same this year as he did the first time he woke up in the 1940s. He understands time, as a concept. It doesn’t apply to him though, because he is a weapon.

          “I was engineered in HYDRA base for their use,” the asset repeats slowly, because Steve doesn’t seem to understand him.

          Steve sighs. There’s none of that fire from when they were kissing. He looks old and tired, all of his nearly one hundred years. He shakes his head.

          “No,” he sighs. “You were a kid with me. We grew up together, Buck.”

          “Stop calling me that,” the asset snaps.

          “What do I call you then?” Steve says, sounding like he’s losing his patience with the asset for the first time. After everything—and he loses it after _this_. It’s ridiculous. The asset doesn’t understand Steve at all. “Because before you seemed fine with it, and now—”

          “I don’t have a name,” the asset grouses. He sounds petulant, and he’s completely giddy about it. He can be _petulant_. Steve hasn’t hurt him yet; the worst he does is cross his arms like the asset is a precocious child he’s seen screaming and crying on the street. The asset grins.

          “You have to have a name,” Steve says, exasperated. “What am I supposed to call you? _That weapon_?”

          The asset recognizes that as a joke. He snorts, which is as close to laughter as he thinks he might get.

          Steve looks pleased. He sounds a little happier, at least, when he says, “So what do you want to be called?”

          The asset thinks it over. What’s an appropriate name for a weapon? He knows they all have names, have brands—but what is he supposed to call himself, Smith or Wesson? He shakes his head at the thought, twitchy and confused, and he ignores Steve’s curious look. The asset presses his hands back into the wall behind him.

          “What did you call me earlier?” he says. “When you said—When I first woke up.”

          Steve watches him carefully. Then his attention wanders, and the asset lets him think, keeping a close eye on him all the same, keeping his back and hands to the wall, where no one can hurt him and he can’t hurt anyone either.

          “I said—” Steve hesitates. He inhales deeply, and the asset listens to the slow cadence of his breath and tries to match his beating heart to it as Steve lets it out. “I said, ‘Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You came here under your own volition, and you’ve been here for the whole afternoon. You have not been harmed.’”

          The asset blinks at him distrustfully. He tries to keep his heart steady, to the same beat as Steve’s measured breaths.

          Steve steps forward and lays his hand on the asset’s arm. The asset flinches, but Steve doesn’t move his hand, and the asset’s breathing gets deeper and deeper, like he suddenly needs a whole lot more oxygen just to get by. He tentatively raises his arm and, as lightly as he knows how to touch, he presses his hand (in starts and stops) to Steve’s chest. He feels the rise and fall of him and makes his own breathing follow the same pattern, until he’s calm again.

          “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve repeats quietly.

          He’s no Bucky—that’s for sure. _Barnes_ doesn’t sound right either, and _Buchanan_ is laughable all on its own, even for somebody as unable to laugh as the asset is. It’s all wrong. He doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t _need_ a name, because weapons don’t deserve them, or want them, or have them.

          Steve thinks he’s more than a weapon, though. Steve calls him _Bucky_ and _James Buchanan Barnes_. Steve wants him to sleep, to eat, to be warm—Steve thinks they grew up together. Steve thinks he’s human.

          Steve wants to kiss him.

          The asset breathes in. Maybe he doesn’t deserve any of these things, but he has this uncontrollable feeling like he _wants_ —wants to be someone who can have these things, wants to be someone Steve wants, wants to be some _one_ instead of some _thing_. He’s not this Bucky that Steve knows—he’s not whomever he is when he blacks out and knows Steve too. But he wants to be.

          He feels the _thump thump_ of Steve’s heart beneath his hand. He feels the steady rising of his chest. He just wants this not to be a dream, which his tenuous grip on Real and Not won’t let him lock down as fact.  The asset doesn’t feel real—but he watches Steve’s calm, cool eyes. He doesn’t let his breath catch before he breathes out. He wants to want without feeling like it’s more than he deserves.

          The asset says, “Call me James.”

          It feels wrong as soon as he says it. Weapons don’t have _names_. The asset shouldn’t be so greedy as to ask for one, even one that feels wrong, that doesn’t fit, that isn’t his.

          But Steve’s nodding. Steve breathes it out like a prayer on wind.

          “James,” he says, nodding. “I can do James.”

          The asset blinks at him. He opens his mouth to say something else, but he knows Steve doesn’t want to hear any more of his protests, so he closes it again. Then without a second glance, the asset turns and leaves the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. He doesn’t hear it reopen as he goes back into the living room, so he knows Steve isn’t following or watching as he hefts up the window and climbs out into the warm night air. The summer air is balmy and hot and feels like a stranger on James’s skin, the stranger he is now, the stranger he has a chance to be.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          He comes to on the street. It’s nighttime now, the road and sidewalk aglow with the lamps lighting up the night. He isn’t wearing his jacket anymore—he took that off before he fell asleep—but it’s warm enough that it doesn’t matter.

          Bucky stumbles a little as he comes back to himself, but after a quick assessment of his situation—he’s alone, nobody is following or with him, and he doesn’t seem to have anything on him that could be a tracker—he shrugs and keeps walking. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he doesn’t care. He shoves his hands in his jeans’ pockets and just goes.

          Vaguely, he recognizes the sights of the city around him. Even if it’s not Brooklyn, Bucky would recognize New York from a deep sleep by just a pin hitting a gutter. It’s only slightly disconcerting to remember that his weapons have been removed with his sweatshirt, but it doesn’t really matter. A deep, dark cloud has settled in his gut, and there’s nothing that’s going to fill it, so he just keeps walking.

          He finds the pond by chance. It’s small but it will do; he sits on a bench by the edge, right next to a girl in cutoff shorts. She looks young, but apparently not too young to be smoking a cigarette. She eyes him a little when he sits down and scoots a little away from him, but it’s not like there are any other benches around, so he can’t even move to make her feel better.

          “Can I bum one?” he asks.

          Her brow smooths out a bit, like this shared something in common means something to her. She nods and digs around in her back pocket until she finds a smoke for him, then passes it over, along with a light.

          Bucky hasn’t smoked in too many years to count, but the burn is the same sickly sweet one he knows and loves. The girl isn’t smoking Luckys like he used to—her pack says _Marlboro_ in thick black letters across a red stripe—but even though it’s harsh, it does the trick.

          “I’m Kat,” she says, nestling her lighter back into her pocket. “You look like you’ve had a rough night…”

          “Bucky,” he supplies numbly.

          “Bucky,” she finishes. “What brings you here at this time of night?”

          “Let me guess,” he says, smiling wryly at her. “Bad place for bad people?”

          “Right in one.” She sighs and pauses to inhale again, then glances back at him. “So? What’s your deal?”

          “How’s it your business?” Bucky returns, but he’s mostly teasing. Kat recognizes it and grins.

          “Because you’re sitting on my bench, kid,” she says, even though she can’t be older than her young twenties. “You’re scaring away my customers, too. They might think I’m already taken.”

          “Ah,” says Bucky. “Well, I’ll only be here as long as this smoke is.”

          Kat watches him for a long couple of seconds. Then she scoffs and rolls her eyes.

          “Whatever,” she says, ashing her cigarette out over her knee. They both watch the ash crumble onto the grass. “So? What’s got you looking like you got your tail run over? Let me guess—a girl?”

          Bucky wants to dispute it, but it’s close enough to the truth that he decides to work it to his advantage instead. Besides, Kat’s nice. And he’s taking up her time—he might as well entertain her for it.

          “My best guy lives around here, somewhere,” he says instead. With the hand still holding his Marlboro, he gestures vaguely over his shoulder. It looks like he knows where he’s talking about. “I left. No idea how to get back.”

          “Ahh,” says Kat. “First time in the city?”

          “I grew up in Brooklyn,” says Bucky. “I haven’t been back to New York in awhile, though.”

          “So you’re just back for a lucky weekend,” says Kat, smirking at him now. “Well, sorry about the fight with your boy—that’s why you left his place at four in the morning, right?”

          Bucky nods, even though he isn’t sure if it’s true or not. His mouth feels warm and his shirt smells the way Steve always did, but there are so many hours missing from his fugue that he doesn’t want to put any of it together in a mismatched puzzle that may add up to things he doesn’t want to admit he wants, if it turns out to lead another way. So he just nods.

          “Well,” says Kat, taking another long drag before she goes on, “it must have been a bad one. I tell you what—go stumbling around the city long enough, get turned around a few times. I guarantee you’ll look so lost and stupid by the time you make it back to his place, he’ll have no choice but to forgive you for whatever stupid shit you did.”

          Bucky laughs, just breathily at first, but then a real, roaring, chest laugh. He doesn’t even know where to begin to tote up all the stupid shit he’s done—and that’s just him. The Winter Soldier is another animal entirely. So he laughs and laughs until Kat cracks a wry smile right back and throws her elbow out towards him. She misses, but the sentiment is there.

          “I’m serious,” she says.

          “I know you are, kid,” says Bucky. He readjusts so he’s facing her now, slinging his arm over the back of the bench. “How about I’ll make you a bet—if he doesn’t want to speak to me when I go back, you buy me lunch tomorrow. If we’re all good because of how, uh, lost and stupid I look, I’ll come back and pay you what I just cost you. Huh?”

          Kat smirks. “Sounds like I’m losing money either way.”

          Bucky rolls his eyes. “Well, I don’t have any cash on me now, sweetheart. Or was the homeless look too confusing for you?”

          “Oh, that wasn’t a fashion choice?” Kat laughs. “Okay, okay. Thirty bucks to whoever wins. Deal?”

          When she sticks out her hand, Bucky automatically flinches back from it. A lump swells in his throat, but he chokes it down and meets her hand with his, and they shake on it. She doesn’t mention his hesitation; he doesn’t tell her that the only reason he isn’t sure if Steve will still be mad is because he doesn’t know if he _is_ mad, because Bucky has no idea why he left his apartment in the first place—he doesn’t even know if they left together, or Steve kicked him out, or what. He has no idea where Steve is, or what happened. But he shakes Kat’s hand all the same, and she lets him.

          “I gotta go,” Bucky sighs.

          He flicks his half-smoked cigarette away from him, and it sails away and lands flatly in the pond. Kat is silent as he stands heavily, dusting his jeans off from imaginary dirt. He shoves his hands back in his pockets and turns to go.

          “Hey,” calls Kat. Bucky turns back around to her partial smile and the cigarette she’s holding out, the filter end towards him. She glances at it, then at his face. “One more Red for the road, soldier?”

          Bucky swallows thickly. His arm—his flesh-and-bone arm—feels lead and heavy as he stretches it out, but he takes it from her no problem. He calms a little as he sticks it between his lips. She lights it for him as he leans down, and then he gives Kat a little salute and whirls around.

          “See you tomorrow to collect my winnings,” he calls.

          He hears Kat’s laughter bubbling up behind him as he strolls off down the street. He even quirks a little smile himself before he turns the corner away from the pond.

 

          Steve’s place takes him nearly two hours to find. He doesn’t have a phone or any way to get directions, and even if the few people out and about did know his location, it seems a little suspicious to be running around in the dead of night asking after Captain America. He doesn’t want any authorities to so much as suspect he’s in the area; if it wasn’t nearly five in the morning, Bucky would be nervous about even having his sweatshirt gone.

          In the end he only finds it because he finds the big building with the A emblazoned on its front, and he remembers Steve saying that his apartment faced Avengers Tower. He has to make a few guesses, and he breaks the glass on a few front doors, but eventually he sees it—an apartment complex with security too good for Bucky to break into, and the front door is propped open with a small, round stone.

          Bucky picks it up and bounces it in his palm as he slips through the doors, letting them shut behind him. It’s a perfect rock, a tiny black sphere—exactly the kind that he and Steve used to covet when they were tossing them at passing cars from the curb, because they were nearly indistinguishable from the pavement once someone came around looking for the culprits and couldn’t even find their ammo.

          He doesn’t know Steve’s floor either, but once he gets in the elevator, he sees the big button for Floor 7 colored in red and blue marker, leaving only a strip of white left at the bottom. Bucky snorts and slips back out of the elevator; he would rather climb in through the window instead, now that he has the right place and floor.

          The fire escape takes some leg work and a dragged-over dumpster to reach, but he manages it. He’s not sure he could have, were he working with a normal body. For the first time, the knockoff serum he’s running on counts itself on his team instead of working against him; Bucky smiles grimly at the thought as he swings himself up to the first level and begins to climb.

          It’s a fast trek up to the seventh floor. It doesn’t take much effort to find Steve’s apartment; the window isn’t open, but Bucky recognizes the subtle SHIELD-level tech of the nearly invisible cameras, shaped like cracks in the frame of the window. Of course Captain America would need to be monitored at all times; Bucky wonders whose safety it’s really for. Steve’s only ever been as likely to follow the rules as he sees fit.

          Bucky pulls his shirt up until it covers his face and swiftly elbows the tiny cameras out of commission. People, government agents, will come looking now—but they’ll be expecting burglars or over-patriotic teens looking to meet their hero, not a Soviet assassin who’s supposedly out for blood but really just wants to curl up on the couch.

          He’s out of weapons, but it isn’t that hard to pull open an unlocked window of one of Steve’s neighbors and slink into the kitchen. Either nobody’s home or nobody hears him as he takes a knife from their cabinet and slips back out the window. With the security cameras gone, it’s easy to jimmy open the lock on Steve’s window, heft it up, and slip inside.

          There’s no lights on and no noises in the apartment. Bucky pokes his way around until there’s only one room left—what must be the bedroom, as the other doors he opened led to a bathroom and a storage closet. The door is unlocked, and Bucky slips his way inside.

          Steve is still real, laying there in the middle of his bed, curled up on his side like he’s forgotten that he’s not still in the trenches spooning with Bucky to keep warm. Bucky shakes his head and toes out of his shoes, which he uses as a pillow as he curls up in the corner of Steve’s bedroom. His eyes find Steve on the bed again, keeping him in his sights. No sudden moves. No sudden disappearances. Bucky’s not scared of Steve, but he is scared of other things. Besides, he’s slept on the floor of Steve’s room plenty of time before—it could be any year in the twenties or thirties, keeping vigil by Steve’s sickbed as he hacked his way through the winter. On days when Steve wouldn’t let him slip in beside him as a living furnace, Bucky found other ways to stay near.

          He thinks Steve’s asleep; he’s been watching him for nearly ten minutes, and he’s just about ready to close his eyes himself. Then he hears, in a sleepy voice he knows too well,

          “Wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

          Bucky holds his breath. When Steve doesn’t say anything else, he lets it out, slow and shaky and quiet.

          “I was just having a cigarette,” he murmurs eventually. “Do you wanna give me a lecture on my health on top of complaining that I broke curfew?”

          Steve’s soft laugh floats over to him from across the room.

          “M’glad you came back,” Steve whispers.

          Bucky huffs and hunches in on himself, a couple inches from the wall. He closes his eyes.

          “Me too,” he mumbles.

          The strange thing is that he’s not used to sleeping near Steve, not anymore, but now that he _is_ sleeping near Steve, he expects it to be like it used to be. He expects Steve to make dumb jokes that make them both laugh too hard because they’re tired, or to announce he’s getting up to pee and accidentally trip over Bucky even though he’s nowhere in the way, or to start talking and never stop even after Bucky falls asleep. But he’s silent, and after awhile Bucky hears the slow steadiness of his breathing and knows that he’s asleep. Just like that.

          Bucky closes his eyes and works on breathing deeply, in and out. In and out. After a long, long time, he feels his heartrate slowing. He’s not used to sleep finding him easily, but today it seems simpler than usual. He barely remembers to find Kat and thank her, later. He still owes her thirty dollars.

          Bucky follows Steve into dreams the way he follows him anywhere: steadily and without thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [see you again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgKAFK5djSk)...
> 
>  
> 
> [i'm freyias on tumblr :^)](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/148247443280)
> 
>  
> 
> xoxox


	3. lost somewhere in outer space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happened?” Steve reiterates.
> 
> James isn’t stupid; he can see the evidence of his other self’s freak out as clearly as Steve can. He was looking for something.
> 
> But James doesn’t know how to tell him the truth: That sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it’s just the way it is, random freak outs apropos of absolutely nothing, a torn shower curtain here, a bar fight there. Sometimes it’s just bloody knuckles and a mess to clean up, because James’s head doesn’t work right, because sometimes he’s very angry and there’s just no reason for it. Sometimes he tears up his friends’ apartments and there’s just no reason why he did it. He was just scared or sad or angry because his brain told him one thing when it was really another, and he’s given up trying to be normal by now.
> 
> “I don’t know,” he says calmly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for dissociation, having no fucking clue what's real, and a good dose of a panic attack
> 
> xo

**BUCKY**

 

 

          The mornings go like this: Bucky wakes up first and lies still and feigns sleep until Steve gets up for his morning run. There is nearly two hours in which Bucky has the place to himself, and he showers or cooks breakfast or flips through the television channels at his leisure. Once he even ventured outside for a nice, greasy diner breakfast, and he discovered that Steve leaves the door unlocked when he goes on his morning run. Bucky usually lays back down and pretends to still be asleep when Steve comes back and showers and goes through his morning routine, and Steve pretends to fall for it even though the bathroom mirror is fogged or the kitchen smells like pancakes or Bucky has clearly changed into one of Steve’s t-shirts or a pair of his sweatpants.

          Bucky likes when he’s in control of his mind for the mornings; he likes waking up and seeing Steve trust him enough to be home alone, and then exercising his own (dusty, abused) trust and watch Steve come back every time. He likes when Steve pours him coffee and then talks at him while Bucky pretends to read the newspaper he knows Steve picks up mostly just for him. He likes when they don’t talk all morning, but he lays on the couch and shuts off his brain for awhile, surrounded by Steve’s things, by the scent of his borrowed shirt, by his low voice as he hums in the other room. He isn’t always there in the morning—sometimes he wakes up in the next afternoon, or two days later, or whatever, and he knows that his other self stole those precious moments from him, those mornings lit softly by early light and overcast with the kind of peace that doesn’t come after ten—but he likes it when he is.

          He’s been living with Steve for just over three weeks, with the same routine, when he wakes up one morning, the first one he’s been present in his own body for in a couple of days. He sighs happily and rolls onto his back—he still sleeps in the corner of Steve’s room, but by now he has a pillow instead of his dingy shoes—and smiles up at the ceiling. He listens carefully to the noises of the city, of people living their busy lives next door and a floor down and all the way down on the street; but he doesn’t hear anything from the rest of the apartment, so he knows that Steve’s still out running. It must not be that far past sunrise.

          SHIELD did come by to check on Steve the day after Bucky broke the cameras, but Steve lied his way smoothly through that while Bucky lay awake in the other room, marveling that he was worth this to Steve. Now he does similarly: Marveling that he’s alive, in Steve’s apartment, prepared to see another day.

          Bucky gets up and showers quickly, smelling Steve’s soap and his shampoo permeating the foggy air through the bathroom. It still smells like that when he towels off with one of Steve’s spare towels—that one reeking of his detergent—and goes into the kitchen to make something to eat.

          Steve comes in while Bucky’s flipping over one of the three pancakes he has on. He was going to just eat all of them himself, but when Steve hums in greeting and brushes past him to pull out two plates from the cabinet, Bucky doesn’t say anything to dissuade him from his assumptions.

          “How was your run?” Bucky asks, because Steve’s passed him a mug of coffee so he can now communicate in more than just grunts and annoyed looks.

          “Good,” says Steve. “We went all the way down past that coffee shop I told you about—remember, I said we could go the next time we went out for breakfast?”

          Steve doesn’t mention that they have _never_ gone out for breakfast. He never does. He just says things like _if_ and _next time_ and _someday_. Bucky swallows and flips over another pancake. He doesn’t know what they’re going to do with the third one, that odd one out; maybe just split it in half.

          “Yeah,” says Steve. “Anyway, Sam says they’re starting debriefs for a mission today even though it’s not for another _month_ —I hate when they do it this early—”

          Bucky knows all about Sam. He knows him superficially anyway: How he and Steve run together every morning and they tease each other relentlessly while they do it, how he can put away more burgers than even Steve can, how he’s saved Steve’s life more times than he knows how to repay him for. He’s Steve’s best friend—it’s beyond obvious—and Bucky feels a soft spot for him, this man he does not know, for calming Steve down when he’s been overburdened and overworked for far too long. Bucky sees it in the way Steve talks about him; they have the bond that war vets have when they’ve fought together, and it isn’t all from their shared battles.

          This is all only slightly overshadowed by the pangs of guilt and jealousy that stricken him every time he hears Sam’s name. Bucky should be the one to be there for Steve, the way he always has been whenever he’s been around to pick up the mantle. Someone else has taken it in Bucky’s absence, and despite his relief that Steve is still well-loved, there are shades of unhappiness that color this soft spot.

          Bucky _hmm_ s and _ahh_ s as Steve talks through the rest of breakfast preparations, something about Sam and his friend Nat and this mission he has going on tomorrow, and they sit down at the table to begin digging in. They each make themselves more coffee. Steve tries to give him the extra pancake. Bucky splits it smoothly in two and divides it up.

          “So what’s on the agenda for today?” Steve says. He says it every morning. Bucky rarely has something to relay back.

          He shrugs today just as he shrugs every other time Steve’s asked him.

          “Maybe watch another marathon of that tiny house show?” he offers, because Steve’s mouth does this twisty thing every time Bucky says “nothing” and he doesn’t want to see it again. But he does it anyway.

          “Want to come out with me and Natasha?” Steve says, sounding more upbeat with the suggestion. He slaps his palms down on the table. “We’re going to get coffee and walk around. You should come.”

          Bucky shrugs noncommittally. “Maybe,” he hedges.

          Steve just nods at him. Neither of them are surprised when after breakfast, Bucky gathers their plates and cleans up while Steve goes to shower off his run and gets dressed.

          He comes back out a half hour later, looking cleaned up but dressed down. He stops by where Bucky’s sprawled out on the living room couch trying to read a magazine he found on Steve’s coffee table, but it’s really boring and dense and he doesn’t really understand the current events in it.

          “That’s an old one,” Steve says.

          Bucky snorts. He isn’t sure that this “Who wore it better?” article was ever important enough to warrant its three pages, but who is he to judge? He’s still puzzling away parts of the future.

          “You’re going to meet your friend?” Bucky says. He glances up at Steve without putting down his magazine. Steve’s just standing beside the couch with his hands on his hips, looking down at him.

          “Yeah,” Steve says with a sigh, sounding defeated. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

          Bucky’s attention is already being drawn back to the article. “I’m sure,” he says absently.

          Steve says nothing for a long moment; then Bucky hears him sigh again. Distantly, in his periphery, he notices Steve walk away towards the front door.

          “Okay,” Steve says. “I’ll be back this afternoon if you want to get dinner or something.”

          Bucky just grunts. The front door opens.

          “Bye, James.”

          Bucky grunts again. Then he freezes; the front door squeaks its way shut. Bucky sits up, his gaze zeroing in on where Steve’s barely visible through the gap in the almost-shut door.

          “What?”

          Steve pauses. He pushes the door open again and sticks his head back into the apartment, his brow furrowed as he looks at Bucky.

          “What?” he echoes.

          Bucky squints at him. “Did you just…Did you just call me James?”

          Now Steve’s the one looking at _him_ like he’s talking crazy; he tilts his head a little, looking a kid again, the look he used to wear all the time before Bucky learned that there was no use telling Steve that he was just too small to be much use in a scrappy fight.

          “Yeah?” says Steve, sounding just as confused as Bucky feels. “That’s what you…I mean…What? What are you…”

          He shakes his head like he’s clearing his ears of water. Bucky blinks back at him.

          “James?” Bucky echoes. “Since when have you _ever_ … _ever_ called me James?”

          Steve is still looking at him funny. “Sorry,” he says, making the end of the word turn up like in question. “I thought that you…Never mind. I’m sorry.”

          “Don’t be,” Bucky says, nonplussed. “Just…don’t.”

          Steve’s brow is still furrowed.

          “Okay,” he agrees. They stare at each other for a protracted moment; then Steve says again, “Bye, Buck,” and they are both very aware of the name he has left tacked off the end, the name he has replaced with this other nickname instead.

          Bucky just stares at him some more.

          “Bye,” he says, sounding distant and echoed and not much like himself.

          Steve dips his head and backs back out into the hallway, shutting the door firmly behind him. Bucky blinks at the door for a few more moments before giving up and slumping far down on the couch. He goes back to his magazine, determining that some things are better left forgotten.

 

          When Steve disappears, Bucky is usually pretty good at entertaining himself; he finds things to watch on TV or marvels at all the literature (books, from history novels to war stories to magazines on fashion) or cooks, because he did a lot of cooking when they were in Brooklyn together and something about the mixed smells of parsley and salt and garlic (or whatever he decides to make) reminds him desperately of old times. It could be 1937 right there in their kitchen, twenty years old and making them dinner after a long day at work; or breakfast before they headed out. It’s easy, he thinks, to sink back into that old Bucky for just a couple of hours a day than to try to find out who he might be now in this new skin.

          He’s making himself lunch, no illusions about the year for once because the light slanting in from the living room reminds him that this apartment is bright and open and not theirs, where the neighborhood was bad and the sounds were not of stereos and singing but of raised voices and gunshots. He knows Steve won’t be joining him, that he’s terribly busy with some Avengers business or other, but something still pulls in his gut when he takes just one plate down from the cupboard and sets the dining table for one.

          After lunch, Bucky makes himself at home on the couch in the other room. He pulls a throw from the other chair over his legs and settles in nicely, the afternoon light casting a pleasantly ambient glow over the whole room. For a moment he feels like he’s in a sepia photograph: there’s never been anything but this room for him, aged and faded away, ground to death by light and time, leaving only must and particles of dust in the light where they used to be something more. In his head, the room looks like something from Steve’s art journals, back when he let Bucky look over his sketches and they would decide which ones were worth doing something with if he ever decided to do anything with them. There’s a stillness to it. For a moment—for forever—he’s lost in time.

 

          Bucky doesn’t know how long he zones out for. When he refocuses on the present, though, it seems strange, like a picture that’s just slightly off-kilter but with no immediately discernable faults. There’s just this feeling like something’s off, deep in the pit of his stomach where there’s nothing to do but simmer in it.

          He looks around, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. There’s the television he had muted so he could watch the subtitles scroll by without the sensory overload of their voices; there’s the coffee cup he left on the corner, just one because he reused it for his second cup; there’s the warmth of this throw he put on his legs, more for comfort than for warmth because the wool and weave of it is nice but not particularly hot.

          Bucky pauses—he has no idea where any of this came from.

          His heart leaps and he sits up, confused.

          He has no idea where _any_ of this came from. Not how he got here, or who any of this belongs to, or why he’s lying on this couch.

          No, he forces himself to remember, because this is Steve’s apartment. Steve was there drinking coffee, and there calling him—by the wrong name…Bucky shakes his head and goes back to recounting the things he remembers as fact, an old trick from when his brain played wildly with him and he couldn’t remember who or where or why he was. Except it’s not working now. He shakes his head and does it harder: That’s where the hallway leads to Steve’s room, and that’s the book Steve was reading the other day, bookmarked to a page that…Bucky put the bookmark in when Steve put it down without closing it.

          It doesn’t seem real anymore, and now that he’s seen cracks in his reality, he sees them everywhere. Now there’s no evidence at all that somebody else ever lived in this apartment: There’s the TV that _Bucky_ turned on, and the single coffee cup on the counter, and the throw that he put there…but didn’t need.

          His heart is screaming in his chest now, almost as loud as his head. This could be any year in the late ‘40s—HYDRA used to set him up almost exactly like this, with his own place and a batch of confused memories, telling him that this is how things are—he’s finally free and safe and comfortable—and then they ripped it away, quick as a knife’s cut, reminding him that he’s trapped and always will be: His other self.

          Except…he _saw_ Steve, living and breathing beside him for days and days, for weeks. He escaped HYDRA after the fight in D.C., when it all fell down…He just suddenly can’t remember whether or not any of that was real. How many people had he passed that had all just been plants, HYDRA agents mixed with real civilians to check his behavior? How much of his traveling hadn’t been real, just a simulation like everything else? What if he had never found Steve after all, and his brain just conjured him up to fill the gaps about why he settled down in his apartment? Steve might never have been real, here with Bucky. Steve could be anywhere on Earth, unaware that Bucky’s fevered and beat-down brain was making him up to fill the void.

          “Steve,” he says aloud to himself, but the word itself does nothing to will his memories to relinquish the truth about whether or not they’re real.

          They have to be real.

          Bucky throws the blanket off himself and scrambles up to his feet. His eyes land on a flower pot by the window and he leaps across the room to it, tearing it off its holder and checking the underside. There’s no bugs there, so he digs his fingers hard into the dirt and wrenches the lone flower up—too perfect, too singular—and spills that and the mess in the pot out onto the windowsill. There’s nothing at the bottom either, no recording device that he can see; but like SHIELD’s security measures on the outside of Steve’s window, Bucky isn’t sure that he trusts his own senses to be equal to whatever HYDRA has cooked up to test him—and he’s sure it _is_ a test, of how long until he realizes that the world is wrong and he’s still in captivity, how long it takes him to try and escape, how long until he catches on to being observed.

          There’s nothing he can find in the bookcase either, or under the couch cushions, or in the light fixture. He’s hyperventilating by the time he moves on from the main room, having already searched every obvious and obscure place from where HYDRA might have bugged the room. The kitchen’s clean too, and he’s tearing into the bathroom—it probably _isn’t_ in the bathroom, but just to be safe—when he hears the front door open and freezes.

          There’s no escape from the bathroom, but he’s tensed and ready to fight his way out—to the door, or one of the windows—as soon as they come for him. There’s a second bedroom, unused but for guests, that has a window that leaps out directly onto the street instead of a fire escape. They might not expect him to make that jump—he might have way out, if he can just get to it.

          “Bucky?” somebody calls.

          So there really was somebody else living there with him. The fact that that piece of his memory is real is only mildly comforting, because that still doesn’t mean it was Steve all that time.

          It does sound like Steve—and Bucky would know his voice anywhere, through all their lifetimes—but that doesn’t mean it is Steve. Face swapping technology—somebody that has Steve’s rough frame and build—Bucky didn’t have time to analyze Steve’s new body well enough to know the difference, probably. Besides, Steve’s a national icon now, with tons of press coverage and his face on every other action figure. If HYDRA wanted to spend the time copying his mannerisms and appearance, they would have plenty of research material with which to do it. Some voice-changing technology would be easy enough to acquire, and even easier to duplicate with how often Steve spends speaking to important people, all of it caught on camera and broadcast across the nation—across the globe.

          Bucky doesn’t move. The front door closes.

          “Bucky?” the voice says again. He sounds confused now, but not worried. Bucky basically never leaves the apartment, and never during daylight hours.

          He backs away from the ajar bathroom door and leans against the other wall. It will be easier to pounce from there. He sinks to a crouch for extra leverage and prepares himself, and waits.

          He hears other doors opening, and the window in the living room as the man checks the fire escape. All the while he calls out Bucky’s name. Bucky doesn’t move, just tenses further and further with his racing mind and his heartbeat, which is as fast as if he were facing the gallows.

          Finally, he sees footsteps coming from the bedroom across from him. They pause in the hallway; Bucky can see the shoes facing the bathroom door.

          “Bucky?”

          The bathroom door pushes open minutely and then a face pokes through. Bucky doesn’t think—he hears the man say his name again and he pounces.

          The guy has Steve’s face and Steve’s voice and he fights like a champion. They’re barely wrestling for a minute before he pins Bucky down the cold tile floor, his grip hard and unforgiving but his expression curiously open and concerned.

          “It’s just me,” the man insists in Steve’s voice. “What happened? What’s going on?”

          “Stop,” Bucky gasps. It’s all he can think to say, waiting for the other agents to swoop in and take him back to somewhere less comfortable and forgiving. Somewhere where he only gets blankets when he won’t freeze. Where hairties don’t exist.

          “It’s just me,” the man says again. His grip on Bucky’s wrists slacken. “Bucky, it’s me. It’s just me.”

          “Stop,” he begs again.

          His heart won’t slow down, even though he knows that he’s done for, in one way or another. It wants him to fight, but he has none left in him. He doesn’t know how to make his brain turn back to normal and reset the world the way it should be.

          So maybe HYDRA doesn’t have him—he would be in a cell already—but that doesn’t mean that any of this is real. It doesn’t mean that anything’s pinning him to this floor but his own delusions, delusions that he found Steve and went back with him. He doesn’t remember how he got to this apartment. He just wants to be running again.

          Rough but gentle hands touch his face, and he swings his wild attention back to the apparition of Steve.

          “You’re okay,” Steve says. He sits back, getting off of Bucky, and grabs his metal hand to help him sit up. “Jesus, Buck, you’re red as hell. Like sunburn.”

          Bucky’s too Italian to burn much, but Steve presses his fingers to Bucky’s cheek anyway, presumably to watch if the skin fades back to pale like it should.

          “Hmm,” Steve muses. There’s nothing but the sound of his inspection and the harsh tempo of Bucky’s breaths. “Come here.”

          He gets Bucky to his feet, and Bucky follows mechanically as Steve sits him on the closed toilet lid. He watches, absent and wild, and Steve turns on the tap in the bathtub and then leaves the room.

          Bucky’s breathing has slowed minutely by the time Steve returns with the throw Bucky threw to the floor in his panic, and Steve wraps it around Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky’s heart is still going too fast, but Steve clasps his flesh hand in both of his own and leans against the wall. Steve’s just strong and solid enough for the grip on his hand, tenuous and small as it might be, to be nevertheless grounding; and Bucky can feel Steve’s heartbeat through his palm, and he carefully matches his breaths to it until they return entirely to normal. His heart pounds just to the side of abnormal. They wait.

          When the tub is full, Steve releases him to turn the water off. Bucky feels lost, detached from himself without Steve’s grounding weight. It isn’t as strange as it might have been for Steve to stand him up and slowly strip him of his clothes, no help whatsoever from Bucky, who just stands there and lets things happen to him. It’s much easier to let the world revolve around his unmoving feet than it is to try and keep up with it.

          They lived together through enough rambunctious younger years for any self-consciousness; Bucky just lets Steve lead him to the tub and he slides into the warm water of his bath.

          Steve doesn’t leave him. Neither of them make a move for the washcloth, because it isn’t about that—Bucky closes his eyes and sinks back into the tub, looking up every now and again to make sure that the hands on his shoulders and stroking idly through his hair really belong to Steve. That’s real. Steve on his skin and humming gently behind him, filling his ears with arrhythmic music—that’s real.

          Bucky’s heart rate slows down. Without realizing it, he begins to drift. He feels worn and stalled and still a bit distant, so he lets himself.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          James is warm. It takes a moment for him to realize that he’s in water.

          He knows how to swim in the mechanical way one knows how to ride a bike after years of not doing so (or in his case, after years of only doing so in another life) but he doesn’t need to, laying in cheap porcelain as he is. He hums idly and floats his arms for a moment, making small waves, before opening his eyes.

          He sees Steve first, lounging idly on a stool by the sink and flipping through a book James has seen him reading sometimes. Steve looks up when he turns his head, catching his eye.

          “Hey,” he chuckles. “Lost you there for a moment. Are you feeling any better?”

          James has no idea what he’s talking about. He tilts his head at Steve, unsure how best to convey his lost time. He settles on, “What do you mean?”

          It comes out really slurred and grunted, sleep-addled and relaxed as he is, but it comes out nonetheless. Steve marks his page and sets the book on the closed toilet seat. He kneels beside the tub and reaches out to run his fingers through James’s hair in a gesture that seems nearly familiar, like he’s done it so many times before that it comes as second nature now. It feels nice, so James hums idly and leans his head towards him more. Steve laughs and does it more, a soothing and repetitive motion.

          “You fell asleep,” says Steve, “but before when I came back you were acting really weird. What happened? I was only gone a few hours.”

          James doesn’t know, so he just hums again. Steve sighs and stops rubbing his hair, making James look up at him accusingly.

          “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me,” Steve says, sounding cross for the first time. What’s going on? Nobody came to the apartment, did they?”

          He looks around, alarmed, like he can see the evidence of James’s maybe-transgression from where he’s kneeling on the bathroom floor. James snorts.

          “I didn’t invite anybody,” he answers truthfully.

          “Did anybody just show up?” Steve looks even more alarmed at that thought.

          James doesn’t particularly want to lie to him (even a sort of lie borne of his lack of knowledge of what his blacked-out self gets up to), but he’s well-trained in deception and his morals are so askew that he doesn’t even have a problem shaking his head now.

          “No,” he says, smooth as ever, “I’ve just been here all day. Never even heard the neighbors.”

          Steve frowns at him.

          “Then what happened?” he reiterates.

          James isn’t stupid; he can see the evidence of his other self’s freak out as clearly as Steve can: the shower curtain torn half-off, the pill bottles and toothpaste and Neosporin spilled from the open cabinet all over the floor, the spare toilet paper rolls and cleaning products from under the sink thrown to the ground. He was looking for something.

          But James doesn’t know how to tell him the truth: That sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it’s just the way it is, random freak outs apropos of absolutely nothing, a torn shower curtain here, a bar fight there. Sometimes it’s just bloody knuckles and a mess to clean up, because James’s head doesn’t work right, because sometimes he’s very angry and there’s just no reason for it, sometimes he takes six times as many proddings with a shock pole as usual just to get out of his cell in the morning, sometimes he just can’t swallow food when he knows he should be grateful for his pitiful serving, sometimes he just can’t say “Yes, sir,” to anybody even though he knows he should. Sometimes he tears up his friends’ apartments and there’s just no reason why he did it. He was just scared or sad or angry because his brain told him one thing when it was really another, and he’s given up trying to be normal by now.

          “I don’t know,” he says calmly. Almost bored.

          Steve makes a frustrated noise, which James doesn’t like at all. He reaches instinctively, his wet fingers slipping on Steve’s wrist before he catches it in a loose circle. Steve grunts again, dissatisfied, and looks down at him.

          “What?” he says. His voice is carefully measured; his jaw ticks.

          James frowns. He releases his wrist.

          “I want…to help you,” says James. He weighs the words carefully before he says them, wanting to make sure that they’re true. “I just don’t…have the answers for you. Sorry.”

          Steve sighs. He rubs his forehead wearily with the hand James wasn’t holding and looks at the wall, closed off and confusing again in a second. James wants to grab for his wrist again, but doesn’t.

          “I’m not mad at you,” Steve says carefully. He makes a frustrated noise in his throat and when he repeats himself, he sounds much more genuine, albeit worn. “I’m not mad. I just…I want to help you, and I don’t know how I can if you don’t fill me in on what’s going on with you.”

          James frowns at him. “I don’t—”

          “—know,” Steve finishes for him on another great breath. “I know.”

          They both pause. James wants to fill in the gaps that their conversation has, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He’s basically exhausted his conversation skills anyway, much more for listening than he is for talking, and he’s simultaneously relieved and upset that their conversation is over. There’s so much more to say, but he doesn’t know how or when to say it. The rules for socialization are so far over his head, even when it’s just Steve.

          “I just want to help you,” Steve says, softer. James looks up at him, his hands spread out and his visage earnest. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, just…Tell me how to fix it.”

          James slumps down further in the tub—it’s just one more question that he doesn’t have the answer for. He stares blankly at the opposite wall, trying to will his brain to conjure up an answer for the question, but he doesn’t have one that isn’t all-encompassing and grand, like going back in time and having Steve be there this morning for whatever went wrong. He doesn’t have any big, sweeping conclusion to any of this.

          But then he remembers how Steve’s hands felt on him before, how he woke up warm and cared for and delirious—near drunk—on the attention, and he realizes: Maybe he doesn’t have any solutions for the bigger problems facing them now, but there are smaller ones available to him. For just this moment, he can feel better than he has.

          It comes out in a petulant-sounding grunt: “Wash my hair.”

          Steve laughs a big belly laugh that tells James the words came out exactly as childish as he knew they would. For a moment, he allows himself to smile.

 

          James stays in his bath for a long time. He doesn’t even wash himself until the very end, when Steve throws a washcloth at him and tells him to clean up a bit while he makes something for dinner. James hasn’t even realized that he has tiny cuts here and there from whatever mess his other self made of the apartment, but he examines himself now. His arms and body are marked up with scrapes and scratches that barely hurt, and that he knows will heal in a matter of hours. They’re just battle wounds from where he fought with a bookshelf or an endtable, nowhere near as bad as he’s ever had. James snorts and dunks his arms into the tub.

          He ties a towel over his waist and tugs the plug to let it drain. He can smell something cooking in the kitchen and pushes past into Steve’s room. He doesn’t know what Steve did with the hoodie and jeans he was wearing when he first arrived—maybe threw them out—but he knows how Steve organizes his dresser by now. He finds a comfortable pair of shorts he’s seen Steve run in and throws on a cotton t-shirt he knows Steve has triplicates of.

          The smell of food has gotten more potent and more delicious in his absence; James stops by the stove to scoop some of whatever Steve’s making out of the pot, and it burns as he touches it to his tongue. Instead of recoiling, he grins at Steve in the fluorescent lights of his kitchen. Steve’s eyes crinkle in laughter at the face he makes at the heat of it.

          “How is it?” Steve asks.

          James shakes his head, the wet strands of his hair flopping against his cheeks. “Tastes like barbecued flesh smells,” he says.

          Steve laughs.

          James lounges against the counter while Steve cooks, occasionally fetching him a spice or ingredient that he needs. Steve talks here and there, but James mostly listens, content to hear the sound of his voice washing over him.

          “You know,” says Steve later, once the timer’s gone off and they’re passing one another dishes to set the table together, “you used to complain all the time when I cooked for you. Always said I was doing it wrong and you knew better.”

          Steve’s eyes are kind but appraising, and James recoils minutely. Steve still thinks he’s his friend, whoever he’s mistaken him for or whoever he used to be; James never let on that he’s the one in control of his head right now. He likes who Steve is around him when he doesn’t know, so easy and light and happy, back on familiar grounds with somebody he trusts. Somebody who isn’t James.

          James grunts vaguely. “Guess you got better.”

          Steve frowns at him, tilting his head so much like a puppy.

          “I always thought it was because you didn’t like me babying you. We helped each other out around the house all the time, but I always wanted to be in charge of cooking, because you always set off the fire alarm.”

          James skitters his eyes away for just a second. Then he hitches a smile on his face, only halfway whole, and he scoots past Steve to reach for the cup in his other hand. Steve relinquishes the glass; James grins in full as he moves to the fridge to get the water pitcher in there, and he pours it smoothly into the glasses they set out for one another.

          “Maybe,” he says, eyes fixed firmly on what his hands are doing with the water; and he sounds softer than usual now, soft like he never learned how to be, “Maybe I just haven’t been treated nice in a real long time.”

          Steve opens his mouth, but after staring at James for a little while, he closes it again. Then he turns it up in a tiny smile.

          “Let’s eat,” Steve says. James nods, but for a second he can’t take his eyes away from Steve’s face; then he brushes past him to put the water pitcher back in the fridge, and to finish setting up for dinner.

          The food is delicious—whatever complaints James’s blacked out-self used to have, he doesn’t know if they were in jest or Steve just got better at the craft with time. Either way he makes sure to let him know how good it is, and Steve is pleasantly glowing with faint pride by the time they’re halfway done. James doesn’t ever want to leave the table.

          Steve is looking at him strangely; James cocks his head to the side and blinks back at him.

          “Nothing,” Steve says, despite James not vocalizing his confusion; he shakes his head rapidly and sits up straighter. “I’m just…thinking about what you said earlier.”

          “About what?” says James, spooning more stew into his mouth.

          “About being treated nice.” Steve looks down at his bowl, but James can see how his hands tauten over their grip on the silverware. “I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

          James swallows hard and looks away. Whatever’s rising in his throat is bidding him to answer with the truth: that there’s nothing Steve can do, and the damage is done, and…

          “They were nice to me, sometimes,” James answers quietly. “Just enough to lull me into thinking it was over. That way…”

          Steve’s eyes widen a tiny little bit.

          “It’s twice as painful when they tear it all apart,” he finishes for him.

          James glances at him and sees his throat working hard, his grip tighter than ever. He glances away again.

          “Bucky—” The name comes out choked and wrong, and James glances fast at him again. He guesses he forgot to make his presence known when he woke up in the bath earlier, but it was just so nice to be treated so gently, and by Steve, whose doting nature was gratifying for a whole host of other reasons but which James can only seem to get when he’s playacting his other self’s part. He doesn’t like feeling like this, fragile and craving the gratification that comes from somebody else—it’s different than how he used to feel though, not like he needed approval for survival, but something harder and more insistent and in the beating of his heart in his chest. He can’t want this. “You know that’s not…what this is, right?”

          James looks off to the side. A soft pounding has started up in his head, just to the side of his temple, but it’s becoming more and more insistent, and very quickly. He doesn’t know that this is not what this is, and that’s the worst part—the only part left of him untouched, and HYDRA may have snaked their way into this, too.

          “I…”

          He can’t choke out the rest of the reassurance. Steve’s fingers brush the back of his hand.

          “Bucky?”

          The name sounds wrong in the air; James clenches his fists; his headache builds and builds to a deafening degree. Bucky is not him; and James wants to hate him, for taking up fifty percent of his time and eighty percent of Steve’s heart, clearly—but Bucky is somebody Steve loves, and he’s James from his hands to his heart to his aching head. Whoever he is, he’s somebody worth knowing.

          “I don’t…”

          His jaw clenches against the raging pain in the side of his temple, like a shock treatment bringing him out of his dreams—his delusions. Steve’s fingers wrap fully around his wrist, and James fights the urge to tear his hand away, to stay in this moment for just one more second.

          Then it’s gone—wherever Bucky is when he’s lying in wait, he’s apparently just a headache and a bad conversation away, and James loses quickly to him as his headache overtakes him, back into the recesses of his own mind. Sometimes he’s strong enough to win, but he doesn’t want to fight Bucky anymore—he’s somebody Steve loves, and somebody James therefore wants to know. But that means that sometimes he, himself, can only ever be a fever dream.

          He slips away like one too: fast and strange and forgotten in a second.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          He wakes up warm and sleepy and with Steve’s wide-eyed gaze staring at him from across the table.

          For a second, Bucky doesn’t understand what happened, and his mind tries to play catch-up to bring him up to speed.  But there are gaps that it can’t fill, and he realizes quickly that he fell asleep in the bath and now he’s here, eating dinner with Steve and no idea how he got here and cradling a massive headache to boot.

          Bucky blinks hard trying to get his bearings. He notices, after a time, that Steve’s hand is wrapped tightly around his wrist.

          “Bucky?” he says anxiously. Bucky struggles to focus on him in the muddled confusion that his head has become, in the aftermath of getting thrown back into his body. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

          Bucky clears his throat.

          “Yeah, I’m…” He shakes his head hard. “I’m okay.”

          He wants to ask what happened, but he doesn’t know how to do that without arousing suspicion and he’s not sure he’s ready for that conversation yet. So instead he just tries and fails to give Steve a reassuring smile.

          “Buck, what’s going on?” Steve says flatly. He uncircles his fingers from Bucky’s wrist, the warm welcome weight of them like a phantom limb on Bucky’s skin.

          “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Bucky, glancing away from him and back.

          “You’re not sleeping, you’re freaking out every other day, wrecking everything in our apartment when you’re not sneaking out of it in the middle of the night…You won’t come outside, even with me—You’re barely making sense half the time…Just…Tell me what the hell has been going on with you lately! Ever since I found you—”

          Bucky can hear it in his desperation: How Steve was never going to ask about any of it, how he might have just taken it at face value and never inquired about the gritty parts underneath, just left himself wondering a few feet behind. If Bucky had just hidden it better, Steve might have just tucked it away like so many other parts of them, dusty and better left under the bed.

          “Nothing,” Bucky interrupts defensively. His brain is still foggy, making it difficult to think as it tries to catch up to the argument. “I’m fucking _fine_!”

          He slaps his hands down hard on the table as he says it, making all their plates and silverware rattle. In front of anybody else, Bucky getting to his feet in a rage might have been impressive—but Steve just arches one eyebrow like he knows him too well and stands too. It seems better when he does it, more fluid and graceful and less out-of-control. Bucky snarls.

          “Tell me,” Steve says, crossing his arms over his chest.

          “Leave it alone,” Bucky growls.

          “Bucky, so help me God…” Steve says his name the way Bucky’s mother used to say his first, middle, and last name together—so he knew he was in trouble. Steve raises his eyes towards the ceiling and breathes deeply. “Whatever it is, do you really think we can’t get past this?”

          “It’s not about that,” Bucky snaps. He fights the urge to flip the table; he doesn’t think Steve will find it any more endearing now than he did when they were twenty. “It’s about you leaving this the hell alone!”

          It’s not his finest moment, maybe—but Bucky doesn’t have a lot of those, so there’s nothing much to lose when he storms out of the kitchen. He doesn’t expect Steve to follow him, and he doesn’t.

          Instead, Bucky is forced to listen to the slow but meticulous sounds of Steve cleaning up their joint mess from dinner. It’s the way his mother used to loudly do dishes so everyone in the house knew she noticed how they weren’t helping. This was about as bad, Bucky laying moodily on Steve’s bed with his arms crossed while Steve put away their half-empty servings in the other room. His temper simmers with embarrassment as he lays there fuming.

          He gets ten minutes of stewing before he hears the sink in the kitchen turn off, and then the sounds of Steve padding softly down the hall. The bedroom door creaks open. For a moment, they just look at each other.

          “Come here,” Bucky says quietly. He holds out his arms.

          Steve sits down on the edge of the bed, and Bucky settles for holding onto his arm with one hand. Steve examines the entirety of the seams of his bedspread before looking Bucky in the eyes.

          “I should have left it alone,” he says.

          Bucky sighs. “I should have told you this a month ago.”

 

          He explains it like this: His body lives off muscle memory, so he always knows how to fight and hide and survive, even when his mind, now cleaved in two, doesn’t understand how it understands some things. The gaps in his memory aren’t always gaps—yes, sometimes he genuinely does have trouble with remembering how he got somewhere, and he can’t always tell what’s real, but a lot of the time he’s just getting catapulted in and out of his own body and it’s exhausting to keep up with. It’s why sometimes he seems like an ex-assassin trying to figure his way in the world that’s trying to capture and kill him, and sometimes he really is just a war-torn kid lost in time. And it’s why, when Steve can barely understand what’s happening with him most of the time, Bucky usually doesn’t have an inkling of a clue either.

          When he’s done (and he starts and stops and goes back and starts over so many times, it takes him nearly an hour to get it all out) Steve says nothing for a very long time. Bucky doesn’t know when his grip on Steve’s arm turned to an iron hold on his hand, but he knows that he’s grateful for it.

          “I’m going to help you,” Steve says. His voice is quiet, but his gaze on Bucky’s—when he looks up at him—is as steely as it’s ever been. “Whatever you need. I’ll do whatever I can.”

          “I just want it out of me,” Bucky sighs. “I don’t—He’s dangerous.”

          “He hasn’t hurt me yet,” Steve points out. He sounds almost defensive, like the Winter Soldier is just another part of Bucky instead of something else altogether.

          “That doesn’t mean he won’t,” Bucky says, a little more sharply. “Jesus, Steve, you’re so goddamn trusting all the time.”

          It’s true that Bucky’s fugue state-self had yet to inflict any harm on Steve—and he had weeks and weeks to do so—but that doesn’t mean he isn’t waiting for something, planning something. Maybe he isn’t actively trying to hurt Steve anymore, but Bucky doesn’t know why—and he doesn’t trust him.

          “I don’t want to fight,” Steve sighs.

          Bucky closes his eyes, shakes his head. “Me neither.”

          He can hear it though, the way Steve didn’t agree to anything either, just a vague promise of assistance. Bucky trusts him though, more than he trusts anyone—more than he trusts himself. He scoots over so than Steve can lay down beside him on the bed. For a long while, there is nothing but their silence and their breathing and nothing more.

          “Are these yours?” Bucky asks after awhile. Steve turns his head to look up at him. Bucky plucks at the shirt he’s wearing and gets a grin in return.

          “Yeah,” says Steve. “You stole them after your bath earlier. We have _got_ to get you some clothes of your own.”

          “Shut up,” Bucky snorts. He climbs off the bed and goes over to Steve’s dresser.

          Behind him, Steve sits up, watching him go through the drawers delightedly.

          “I know you just want to wear mine all the time,” Steve teases.

          Bucky throws him a withering glance over his shoulder.

          “Shut up,” he says again. “Where did you put my hoodie and jeans? I’m putting my own clothes back on, I don’t need this.”

          “You only have one thing to wear,” Steve snorts. Bucky hears him getting up behind him, but he doesn’t turn around, even as he feels Steve get closer to his back. “Come on, leave it alone. You can’t wear jeans to bed.”

          “I’m a grown man, Steve,” Bucky says flatly. He levels him with a dead stare, but it doesn’t stop Steve from reaching out and grabbing his wrist as he goes for another drawer.

          “Stop!”

          Bucky looks at him slyly. “So it’s this one, huh?”

          Steve scowls. “You’re just being stubborn. Don’t make yourself all uncomfortable because of your stupid pride, you big jerk.”

          “Who’s uncomfortable?” Bucky wonders, spreading his arms and looking around the room.

          Steve rolls his eyes and tugs on Bucky’s wrist again. His hand slips down to cover Bucky’s. Bucky laughs, letting Steve press him up against the dresser.

          “ _You_ will be,” Steve shoots back, “when you’re sleeping in jeans and a tattered shirt because you wouldn’t just wear my things to bed. It’s an old shirt, Bucky, just leave it on! I don’t even wear it anymore!”

          “You just like how it looks on me,” Bucky accuses, narrowing his eyes at him.

          Steve pauses. His eyes rake slowly and obviously over Bucky’s body. “And? If I do?”

          Bucky’s rejoinder is momentarily stalled. He remembers that feeling on his lips the first night—like somebody else’s had been there too—and his mouth is suddenly too dry to speak.

          “What?” Steve presses, smiling coyly now. “Am I not allowed to have this one little thing?”

          Bucky finds that his hands have found the sides of Steve’s ribs and he isn’t sure how. He tightens his grip there though, tilting his head just that little bit closer.

          “Just this one little thing,” Bucky whispers.

          Steve’s fingers rake through Bucky’s hair, pushing it back and out of his face. Bucky’s breath holds. Steve just looks at him.

          “We’ve done this before,” Bucky says.

          Steve tilts his head. “Was it you or him?” he asks calmly.

          Bucky shakes his head senselessly. He says, “Both now.”

          Kissing Steve is exactly as easy as Bucky thought it would be—and not just because they’ve already done it, but because they were always going to end up here. They’ve been through too much together just to wind up standing here, leaning against a dresser in another century, flirting over clothes and pretending like their worlds are normal and intersecting and knowable. Bucky wonders (idly—with Steve’s mouth catching his over and over again, he isn’t particularly deep in thought) how they can do this like it was always going to happen, no questions or hesitations or conversations, but then he remembers: It always was.

 

          Kissing leads them back to the bed, and Bucky sighs as they curl up beneath Steve’s thick comforter together. He isn’t ready for anything more yet, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind, quietly sliding in beside where Bucky is flopped down on his stomach. Their ankles are touching, and their wrists and their shoulders, and skin here and there, and it’s enough like being intertwined. Bucky feels warm; he feels like sleep could come easily to him. Just two people, normal and intersecting and knowable.

          “What are we doing tomorrow?” Bucky sighs sleepily.

          Steve’s laughter is silent, but it shakes the bed. His hand is soft where it strokes through Bucky’s hair.

          “I have to go on a mission tomorrow,” he says. “They’re calling us all in first thing in the morning.”

          “Oh yeah.” Bucky turns his head to the other side so he can blink at Steve across the bed, pressing his cheek to the pillow. It’s soft, comfortably so. “I might go out. It’s getting boring, getting all cooped up in here.”

          “Be careful,” Steve murmurs. “Some people are still looking for you.”

          Bucky pauses, even as Steve’s eyes drift shut like he hasn’t said anything out of the ordinary at all.

          “What?” Bucky says, nonplussed.

          Steve’s eyes blink open in soft, heady confusion. “What?”

          “ _Some_ people?” Bucky says. “As in, _a lot_ of people _aren’t_ looking for me?”

          “Oh.” Steve looks much more awake now, sitting up in bed and scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Shit. I kind of forgot to tell you, what with everything else that’s been going on.”

          Bucky sits up too, all thoughts of comfortable pillows and easy nights’ sleep gone from his mind.

          “Tell me what?” he says flatly, his voice hard.

          Steve sighs. His fingers pick at a spot on the spotless covers, and he watches his fingers attentively as though his nails worrying the blanket is the most important intel he ever had to memorize.

          “Remember that first night?” he says. “Or…maybe you don’t. You left the apartment and went running around the city for a couple hours—then got back in through the window.”

          Bucky watches him guardedly. “Okay?”

          “SHIELD came over the next day,” says Steve, hesitantly—so much so that it makes Bucky’s heart skip to hear it. “Or, well, what’s left of it anyway. And when they asked what had happened…”

          “I heard you,” Bucky protests. He can feel where this conversation is going and he doesn’t like it. “I heard you talking to them…You just said that it was a bunch of kids messing around.”

          Steve swallows. Bucky watches the line of his throat move and thinks that it feels like the weights Steve’s tied to his arms, right before he drops him into an ocean.

          “I lied,” Steve says. He sounds measured, but Bucky can hear the lines between his words and knows the traces of unhappiness and worry there. “I spoke to them again that afternoon. I—I told them everything.”

          Bucky’s heart stops. It’s what he had expected to hear, but it doesn’t make it any better to know for sure.

          Mechanically, without thinking, he moves to climb out of bed. He doesn’t know where he’ll go—if this is all true, SHIELD has had his location for nearly a month now—if they were going to do anything, they would have done it already. It doesn’t stop the panic now gripping his heart from compelling his feet onward. Steve grabs for him, clumsy hands touching his arms and back.

          “Bucky, _wait_ ,” Steve implores. “Just listen—I didn’t say where you were and I wouldn’t give you up. I cut a deal with them.”

          Bucky pauses. Because it’s Steve—and only because it’s Steve—he sits hesitantly back down on the bed. Realistically, a few more minutes won’t kill him if the past three weeks haven’t already. Steve looks marginally more relieved at his hesitance, and he touches Bucky’s thigh as he scoots closer to look at him directly.

          “There’s nothing to worry about,” Steve whispers, in a tone that makes Bucky instinctively want to believe him. “Well—I won’t lie to you. They’re watching me. But I just said that I had you with me, you weren’t dangerous, and that they were going to let it stay this way and not bother us. Or else. I’d help you escape.”

          Steve is watching him closely for a reaction; Bucky just blinks, unsure what to think.

          “So they think you’re…what?” he says. Steve flinches at the venom he didn’t mean to inject there, and his fingers skitter across his thigh. “My keeper? My warden?”

          “More like an S.O.,” Steve says haltingly. “If nothing happens…”

          “If I stay in line, you mean,” Bucky says flatly. He runs his hands over his face. “Jesus Christ, Steve. Why in the _fuck_ did you just let me trash your house and run amok all this time? We both could have been detained—we both could have been killed!”  
          “SHIELD doesn’t kill people,” Steve insists, “—probably. Look, it’s all pretty touch and go. I didn’t want to mess with it!”

          “Fuck. Steve…”

          “I know,” he says quickly, “I’m—”

          “I’m so fucking _sorry_.”

          Steve pauses. “You’re…what? _You’re_ sorry?”

          Bucky shakes his head. “I’ve been an idiot all month, not knowing what was up or down. I could have seriously messed things up for us if I’d just gone outside at the wrong time or talked to the wrong person.”

          “It’s not on you,” Steve says. “This is my fault. I should have just told you.”

          “You should have,” Bucky agrees. He sighs. “Okay. Shit. We’re gonna fix this. We’re gonna get through this.”

          “I know,” Steve says, but he looks miserable and Bucky gets the feeling—that there’s more to get through than they can handle, and it’s going to be a shitstorm before they find their way to the other side. He’s not sure whether or not they’ll even make it. “I just don’t know how I’m going to convince them you’re not a threat.”

          Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t even bother arguing that he _is_ a threat, because they have more pressing issues—like not being arrested by the feds, feds which Steve so trustingly let into their private business.

          “I’m coming tomorrow,” he says. Steve opens his mouth to protest, and Bucky holds up his hand to stem the tide. “No, listen. I’m going to come—they can have a whole damn guard on me, I don’t care. They have to clear me for combat, right? Then they can see that I’m really up for helping you.”

          “What’s to say they’ll even let you get within five feet of the front door?”

          “Because I’m coming quietly,” Bucky says. “There’s nothing a bunch of good guys like more than a reformed villain giving himself up to help them.”

          Steve looks down. Bucky can tell he doesn’t love the plan. “And what if you’re…you know. Not you?”

          Bucky inhales deeply, and he doesn’t respond until he breathes it out again. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I guess…burn that bridge when we get to it.”

 

          Steve’s unhappy with the arrangement, Bucky can tell, but he doesn’t brook any more arguments. They’ve had it too good for too long—he knows Steve knows. In the end, they tentatively agree to meet with SHIELD in the morning and let them put Bucky through the ringer so he can get cleared for whatever mission they have, and hope for the best.

          Sleep is a more elusive thing after that, Steve no longer touching him and the both of them on opposite sides of the bed. Bucky’s mind is whirring with being outed and then maybe saved, and he knows Steve’s is probably similarly obsessed, worried about what SHIELD will say and how the mission will go tomorrow. For a long time, it seems like the dawn is just seconds away instead of hours and hours, creeping towards them inexorably and promising them nothing but hellfire.

          Then Bucky feels a hand on his where it’s pressed beneath the pillow. Without saying anything, he grabs Steve’s fingers and squeezes his hand hard. Like magic—or advanced Russian technology—he feels like all the weights have been lifted off his shoulder. For this second—this night—he might just be okay.

          Whatever they have coming for them tomorrow, it’s easier to face it like this: Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chap title from [is there somewhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686SmDtBOu8) by halsey ♥♥
> 
> find me @ [freyias](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/148932495445) on tumblr!
> 
> xoxox


	4. and we’re coming for blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For just a split second in the morning, Bucky knows peace. It’s the sunlight filtering in through the cracks beneath the door. It’s the bed beneath him for the first time in ages. It’s Steve’s warm body next to his.
> 
> Then it’s gone, like cold water dumped on a fantasy: SHIELD knows about him, and he has to go in and get cleared by the very people he’s been trying to thwart for seventy years, and he’s hoping he gets through the next twenty-four hours without getting arrested and executed. It goes against everything in him to give himself over to the authorities, but suddenly he doesn’t have much of a choice. And there’s very little Bucky likes less than not having any choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for: discussion of past suicide attempts, graphic sex. not at the same time although i'll admit that was phrased strangely.
> 
> barely made the deadline! the sex scene took forever. blech. but it finally got up to scratch!
> 
> xoxox

**BUCKY**

 

 

          For just a split second in the morning, Bucky knows peace. It’s the sunlight filtering in through the cracks beneath the door. It’s the bed beneath him for the first time in ages. It’s Steve’s warm body next to his.

          Then it’s gone, like cold water dumped on a fantasy: SHIELD knows about him, and he has to go in and get cleared by the very people he’s been trying to thwart for seventy years, and he’s hoping he gets through the next twenty-four hours without getting arrested and executed. It goes against everything in him to give himself over to the authorities, but suddenly he doesn’t have much of a choice. And there’s very little Bucky likes less than not having any choice.

 

          His morning goes by in a blur: Steve makes him coffee and just about tips it down his throat for him; he manages to eat two muffins Steve brings home from a bakery before he gives up; they walk across the street with Steve’s hand tight in his and his sweatshirt pulled up over his face. SHIELD agreed to meet them at Avengers’ Tower at six a.m., which worked to both of their advantage: Bucky doesn’t have to travel far in public in daylight, and SHIELD headquarters stay private with ease.

          Since the fall of SHIELD, the agents that are left in the organization are working with much less complicated technology, and much less of it to boot; but they still manage to make Bucky supremely uncomfortable as they arrest him with all the dignity and grace of the CIA, that one time they tried to bring him in in the eighties (before he escaped five feet outside the front door).

          They prod him all morning, tests of physical and mental strength, tests of loyalty, tests of character. From what Bucky can understand, Steve gave them a file he had on the Winter Soldier, proving that he was under Soviet control when he was committing his crimes over the years; but although he’s been cleared of innocence, they don’t seem to find Steve’s word enough to clear him mentally and accept that he’s no longer under HYDRA control. In all honesty, Bucky’s not entirely sure he is either—but he knows Steve is standing on the other side of the Plexiglas (he heard him argue and argue and argue for it), so he keeps his mouth shut.

          SHIELD doesn’t give up their intelligence easily. In the end they tell Bucky that he can go on the mission, but he can’t get any information on it, he has to follow his S.O.’s orders to the letter, he can’t leave Steve’s sight, he has to have a team of guards, and if he steps so much as one toe out of line he can kiss his preliminary freedom (and maybe his overly stretched on life) goodbye. He considers it more than he deserves, and falls back against the wall as soon as he’s released back into Steve’s care.

          They’re alone in the hallway. Bucky can’t look at him.

          “We have to go soon,” Steve says softly. Bucky suspects that that is not how Steve’s voice sounded when he was forcing their superiors to let Bucky get within two feet of this mission at all. He also suspects that they really should have left many hours ago.

          “I can’t,” Bucky says quietly. He pauses: They did not fight all this way for him to give up now. He sighs and shrugs away from the wall, and without looking at Steve still, he nods his head in one direction down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

          Steve slumps into line behind him, or as much of slumping as Steve Rogers can manage. He still looks strident and powerful and in control. Bucky wonders how many years of faux bravado Steve has left in him before he’s as jaded and weary as Bucky feels now. He wonders if it shows in his face, in his dragging feet, or if he seems as put together on the outside as he feels miserable on the inside. Like Steve does, for sure.

          Steve’s face is turned away from him, but he asks, “Are you okay?”

          Bucky shrugs half-heartedly. “It was too fast,” he offers. It was too easy.

          Steve shrugs too, his broad shoulders brushing Bucky’s when he moves. “We just have to last through this one day at a time.”

          Bucky’s surprised he saw this day through until noon already; he’s not sure he can last until their helicarrier touches back down on U.S. soil tonight. Although technically he’s not supposed to even know they’re leaving the country, as that’s considered too much intel for him to have, the blinking lights declaring _Rybnik_ along the back of the helicarrier are not particularly secretive. For a moment Bucky stands there, blinking at the carrier.

          Then Steve’s hand is on his arm, tugging him along towards boarding.

          “Come on,” says Steve, his voice louder than the ones Bucky can hear rising from inside the carrier—the team he isn’t sure he’s ready to meet, Steve’s partners, Steve’s friends, “you’re going to love Poland from this side of the World War.”

 

          There are six of them: a petite, pretty brunette with striking eyes and a fiercer snarl; a thick, middle-aged man with curled shoulders a nervous, skittering gaze; a sharp- yet wild-eyed man with a loud voice and louder personality; a quiet but smart-gazed man with sharp wit and a quiver on his back; a beautiful but clearly dangerous woman in a skin-tight suit and a dangerous smirk curled just for him; a man casting him a shrewd gaze that quickly melts into easy, happy relaxation when Steve comes in behind him with a hand on the small of Bucky’s back. Bucky knows them from the news and internet, by their superhero names, but he doesn’t know them by the humanized versions that Steve gives to him: Wanda, Bruce Banner, Tony, Clint Barton, Natasha, Sam.

          They are not calm around Bucky. The helicarrier is smooth and spacious from the outside, but the space in which the eight of them (plus Bucky’s four guards) are all packed together is not particularly so; Bucky can see the way they edge away from him instincitively, drawing their knees closer towards themselves or pressing their arms into their seatrests. It’s not obvious, and though their open curiosity is perhaps the more ostentatious reaction (despite the warnings Bucky knows Steve must have given, they do not hide well their searching eyes or hawk-like gazes, following his every footfall), Bucky is more immediately drawn to the way that they inch away from him, like one would from a parasite or plague that is small but deadly to touch, and impossible to predict what move it might next make.

          He situates himself in a far seat, pressed against the window. The helicarrier is identical to the planes that used to fly recruits out during the War, and might even be an updated model of one of those dated crafts. Bucky supposes it’s fitting, given that they’re going to a sort of war.

          Steve sits down next to him and straps in tight. Despite his hesitation at the restraints, Bucky follows suit.

          “What’s in Rybnik?” Bucky asks in a whisper, leaning close to Steve’s side. The others’ gazes all dart to him when he moves. Bucky wonders if he doesn’t have more than one S.O. on this plane, and more guards than just the ones strapped in across from him.

          “That’s classified,” Steve murmurs back. Bucky can see Natasha following his lips as they move, and he tucks his face back further towards the seat so she can’t read what he’s saying.

          “Steve,” he says, half urgency and half exasperation.

          He can hear the laugh that Steve huffs out, just half a breath on the air. “We’re retrieving and disassembling a bomb,” Steve whispers. “Nothing major, but there’s security in and around the compound so we need the whole team in on it. Oh, and Nat’s not the only one who reads lips.”

          Bucky’s attention jumps around the helicarrier. Tucked way back on the far side of the plane, against the other window in the seat facing him, Clint Barton grins and waves at him. He’s situated just so that he has the perfect angle to see Bucky’s face still, even when it’s turned away.

          Bucky curses. “Your friends suck.”

          Steve just laughs. “You wish that was their only talent,” he says, still in an undertone. “Sadly, they’re as good at getting into your business as they are at their jobs. And these are the best spies in the entire world.”

          Bucky sighs. “So much for flying under the radar.”

          “You’re out to the world now, Buck,” Steve says in his normal volume.

          Steve stretches his arms out over his head and shoots Bucky a grin. Bucky rolls his eyes reluctantly and elbows him in the side, mollified and miffed in equal measure when Steve reaches out to ruffle his abundance of hair. Bucky quickly gathers it back against his neck, recognizing the danger of the style in battle, but he pauses when he realizes he doesn’t have any hairties left on his wrist: They’re all either lost or at home in Steve’s bedside table.

          Then out of nowhere, a hand shoots out in front of his face. Bucky moves to swat it away instinctively, maybe to fight, but his seatbelt gets in the way. He’s left windmilling his arms helplessly, and then a leer looms into a view above him.

          “Looking for a tie?”

          It’s Natasha. Bucky sees the hairtie dangling from between her fingers. He grumbles but takes it from her gratefully.

          “Don’t get in his face like that,” sighs Steve, sounding both defensive over Bucky and well used to Natasha’s way.

          “It’s nothing,” Bucky mumbles.

          Natasha rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Steve, listen to him,” she says. She sounds overly bossy, like a put-on personality made just to tease Steve. She puts her hands on her hips. “He’s a big boy. I’m sure he can handle me.”

          She winks at him. Steve looks cross.

          “Don’t,” he warns.

          “What?” she says innocently. She leans in closer and grins at Bucky, but he thinks it looks all Cheshire Cat and no Alice. “Remember me?”

          Bucky blinks at her, unmoving. Whatever game she’s playing, he doesn’t get it. When that becomes clear to her too, her expression only flickers for a second before the smirk is firmly back in place. Steve’s focus swings between the two of them, clearly confused.

          “Oh, how the mighty fall,” Natasha says. Her voice is toneless, but Bucky feels like there’s an edge to it anyway, something he might want to tug on later.

          She turns around, no further explanation, and heads back to her seat. Bucky stares after her for a second before looking back at Steve. No words come, so he just blinks.

          Steve sighs. “That’s Natasha,” he says at length.

          Bucky nods. “That’s Natasha,” he agrees.

 

          The ride is long and strange. Natasha was either a test or a floodgate, but after her, the others seem less inclined to shy away from him. Now their wonder and consternation is open, their stares unhidden by shame, and sometimes they venture to speak to him. Bucky feels a bit like an animal on display, but they don’t treat him like one: occasionally one of them will look just a little too long, and then another will notice and draw Bucky’s attention by saying something to Steve or speaking just loudly enough about a subject that interests him, and he doesn’t notice the first transgression anymore. Bucky doesn’t know how they’re reading him and one another so well but he can tell that they’re playing off each other all the time, everything a game, everything a tactic in this war where their on one team and they don’t know if Bucky’s on the other.

          By the time they land he feels mentally exhausted without having ever said a word, except for the few he exchanged to Steve here and there. It’s been hours but he never drifted out of consciousness, too alert in trying to understand Steve’s friends. He unbuckles and dismounts first—not by his prerogative, but by the meaningful glances of his guard—and he isn’t sure that he’s figured out anything yet.

          Given that he isn’t supposed to know anything about his mission but the orders he’s given, Bucky does not ask any more questions as they trudge towards base together. There are too many people too close to him to safely prod more intel out of Steve without getting the both of them in trouble. He’s well trained at that anyway: keeping his head down and not asking questions.

          The room in which they gather is sparse and beat down, empty but for the eight chairs there. Bucky’s guard stands against the wall behind him. Bucky considers it a blessing that he’s provided a chair with the team at all, and sits down beside Steve without a word.

          There is silence. The nature of their kind of circle—waiting, composed—makes Bucky feel like somebody should be breaking it, like everyone should be devolving into light banter until something official happens that they’re all clearly waiting for, but nobody does. He wants to say something to Steve, to make some kind of aside to alleviate his own tension, but he refrains—barely.

          After several minutes in tenseness, the door opens again, then clicks shut. A composed woman enters, her heels clicking against the floor, her business attire crisp and perfect despite the hours Bucky knows she must have spent on the helicarrier with them all. She’s with SHIELD, or what’s left of it—Bucky saw her just this morning, ordering evals and tests to be done on him first thing in the morning. She was one of the first people he saw; she must have come all this way just to meet with them here.

          She looks no worse for the long travel, and she might as well have just woken up in this building and put herself together. She moves towards the empty space in the circle, where another chair should be but isn’t. She stands facing them all, and everybody else’s eyes snap to her, so Bucky’s do as well.

          “Maria,” says Steve, inclining his head towards her.

          Bucky knows the gesture for what it is; a reminder for him specifically. Everybody else knows who she is already, intimately maybe, so it’s just for his own memory. And it works: Bucky remembers the little plaque on her desk when he first entered her office that morning, a neat nameplate with _Maria Hill_ etched into it in fine, gold letters.

          “Agents,” Maria returns smoothly, casting her gaze around at them all. “You already know what your mission is here. This meeting was called only to give you the specifics of your individual posts and brief you on what you’ll each be doing on the field.”

          She gestures behind her to the blank wall, and an image appears on the screen with her indication. Quickly, Maria goes through the specifics of their posts and what they each have to do. As though conscious of Bucky’s deliberate lack of knowledge, she’s brief and unspecific; he can’t glean too much information about everybody else’s jobs just from the meeting, try as he might to discern the particulars. Steve’s watching him, his gaze a heavy presence on the side of his face, but Bucky doesn’t try to hide his interest in the proceedings.

          True to form, Steve wasn’t babying or protecting him earlier: from what he can tell, it’s as simple a mission as Steve made it out to be before. From the projection that Maria puts up, it’s a simple extraction plan. The bomb isn’t even set to go off anytime soon, but it could apparently blow up an entire city in an instant, so SHIELD wants it deal with before the unspecified enemy determines that it’s time to arm and unleash it. Everyone has a post—marked off in little red Xs on Maria’s board—and their own mission within that post that they clearly have each been briefed on previously, because Maria doesn’t go into detail about any of it.

          Bucky’s job is simple: watch the perimeter. They even gave him the area around where Steve’s supposed to infiltrate through, as though he’s any more likely to betray the others than he is Steve. He supposes it’s a fair assessment. Since he has to be accompanied by his guards the whole time, there will be a total of five people watching to make sure nobody ambushes Steve’s back. Unless he’s completely incompetent—or completely treacherous, he guesses is their paramount concern—it’s basically impossible for him to muck up the job.

          He leaves with everybody else too. Steve stops him out in the hallway and waits for the others to turn the corner. They do, Natasha and Sam turning around to watch them curiously as they go. Steve takes his hand and squeezes it; a slightly more intimate version of their pre-mission reassurances back in the war.

          “You’ll do fine,” Steve says.

          Bucky snorts and shoves at Steve’s shoulder with his free hand.

          “I’ll do more than fine,” he says. “I always do.”

 

          The mission is less intensive than the ones he’s used to, and it goes off without much hitch. Bucky’s used to more complicated plans, and ones that require a bit more action on his part, but he’s willing to take the stir-craziness of staying still while the others banter and coordinate on their coms if it means that he can work his way tighter into the weave of their group relationship, strange as it may be.

          Everyone is visibly more energized on the walk back to the helicarrier after their post-mission briefing. Banner keeps ruffling people’s hair and Clint is flitting between the team members—Bucky included—occasionally jostling shoulders or letting out whoops, jumping onto Stark’s back just to see him curse. Everyone is celebrating, laughing, talking loudly. Bucky is still on the fringes of them, uninvited to their festive joy, but it’s infectious anyway. He finds himself smiling as he walks beside Steve, eyes fixed in the middle-distance but his hearing sharp and his senses attuned to the others’ delight.

          The seats are switched on the way back: everyone is ajumble, quite apart from whatever private preferences and relationships invariably permeate groups like theirs. Bucky keeps his spot by the window, and Steve stays beside him, but the restlessness in him quickly overtakes the others, and they’re standing and swapping seats every other minute, trying to relieve the restiveness in the small space they’ve been given.

          “Hey,” somebody says halfway through the trip.

          For some reason the tone of it, although addressed to no one and certainly not the loudest or most random thing spoken yet, makes Bucky look up. Clint is looking at him, his visage passive but something amicable in the crinkles around his eyes. Bucky tilts his head minutely in question.

          Clint just laughs. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Mr Soviet. You want to play cards?”

          He brandishes the deck he’s holding. The others in the circle around him—Natasha, Wanda, and Sam—just look at him, Sam and Wanda with more wariness than interest, Natasha the other way around. Bucky says nothing for a long moment. He can feel Steve shifting beside him.

          “Okay,” he says at last, and reaches to begin unbuckling himself from his seat.

          The helicarrier is stable enough that he doesn’t tip as he makes his way to the other side of the room, where their circle touches the wall at Wanda’s back. Bucky sits in the space that Clint and Sam make between them and appraises each of them in turn. Natasha, on Clint’s other side, watches him steadily.

          “Clint deals,” she says calmly. Bucky nods.

          Bucky doesn’t mean to profile them as they play, but it’s ingrained in him now, a skill he doesn’t remember gaining and one he certainly never asked for. He sees Clint’s balance of clinical and playful, how he could do better if he cared to try; Natasha’s smooth control; Wanda’s lack of practice but easy skill, her eagerness to learn, her desire to have fun; Sam’s messier but more practical way, how he’s good because he’s done this a thousand times before. He wants to turn his head away; he doesn’t deserve to know any of this about any of them. He never earned it.

          Sam’s winning his second round in a row when the pilot makes an announcement that there will be turbulence and asks them all to momentarily return to their seats. Clint grumblingly packs away his cards and they all follow orders. Bucky’s just strapping himself back in beside Steve when the turbulence hits. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him, like he’s waiting for an explosion.

          “I’ve been through worse,” Bucky mutters. Steve flushes one shade darker beside him, barely perceptible but for how well Bucky knows him.

          “I know,” Steve mutters back.

          “I’ve been through like, a million battles.”

          “I _know_. Shut up.”

          Bucky snorts. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

          Steve elbows him in the ribs.

          The others are talking too, now trapped in their seats as they are. Some of their restless energy seems to have simmered, and Bucky sees them calm now, another piece to their multifaceted selves. He looks down at his hands instead, clenching them into fists on his lap. A second later Steve touches his wrist. Bucky releases the tight curls of his fingers but looks away still, out the window as they fly over the vast ocean below them.

          Bucky doesn’t look back until he hears a scuffling beside him. Somebody’s gotten up despite the turbulence, and he isn’t overly surprised to find that it’s Natasha there, nudging Steve out of his seat.

          “We’re not supposed to move around,” Steve says.

          Natasha rolls her eyes. “Get up, Rogers.”

          Steve does. Bucky watches, detached, as he crosses the helicarrier to take Natasha’s old seat beside Clint, and as Natasha sits down beside him instead and buckles up again.

          “He’s right,” Bucky drawls, and looks out the window again.

          He hears Natasha snort softly beside him. Neither of them say any more, and in the light reflection off the glass he can see that she’s not looking at him any more than he’s looking at her.

          It takes a long while—after the lights have come back on, announcing that they can move about, and after Clint starts up a new game of cards in the corner with Wanda and Steve and Tony—before Natasha moves.

          Bucky can feel it beside him, how she leans a little nearer to him. Her hair swings close, wafting the scent of her his way. She pauses.

          “I’ve been thinking it over,” she says at last.

          Bucky takes his time to swing his gaze towards her. When he does, he merely watches her, impassive. She does not continue. He raises an eyebrow at her.

          “And what,” he says at last, “have you figured out about me?”

          “Not everything’s about you,” she says coolly. She’s speaking in a strange undertone, as though this conversation is theirs to keep secret. “It’s about me.”

          “I know you gave those files to Steve to hand over to SHIELD,” Bucky says disinterestedly. “I know he was looking for me. And they’re how he got them to even let me through the door.”

          “I’m not looking for a thank-you.”

          “I wasn’t going to give one.” Bucky lifts one corner of his mouth and adds, a touch sardonically, “ _Darling_.”

          “Closer,” she comments. “That’s closer. But here’s the thing: You still don’t recognize me.”

          “I know who you are,” Bucky says. “I’m not an idiot. I can use the internet.”

          “Not just my files,” says Natasha, rolling her eyes. “I released those—anyone in the world can get all the dirt on me they want. My aliases, my background, everything. So what I’m wondering is, even if you didn’t remember me—and you didn’t—how come you didn’t ask about it?”

          Bucky rears back from her, just an inch, but he can tell she notices.

          “I read your files,” Bucky says. There’s a warning in his voice. “There was nothing there to pursue.”

          “I know you’re not stupid, Barnes. Maybe Steve doesn’t want to tread too hard down that road, but you’re not going to get anywhere playing broken with me. I know you. I was there.”

          He all but growls her name: “Widow.”

          Natasha crosses her arms, which at least gets her slightly out of his face, and his heartrate thanks her for it. She remains stubborn as ever though.

          “Why didn’t you ask me about it?” she demands.

          “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

          “Yes you do.”

          “No, I don’t!”

          “Yes you do,” she says, infuriatingly calm. “Barnes.”

          “ _What_?”

          “Why didn’t you?” she says. “Why didn’t you ask me about the Red Room?”

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          James blinks his eyes open. He says, “Natalia.”

          Nat stares him down with a calm intensity that echoes through all the years, an inalienable way about her that’s always been and likely always will be. It demands attention, it demands fear. But at her name, her mouth falls open.

          He pauses, waits for her to get her composure. She does, in fits and starts. They both wait until her face is carefully blank; it takes only seconds. He canvasses the rest of the area while he waits, and sees a lot of people he should count as enemies. And Steve.

          “I haven’t heard that name in a long time,” Nat says smoothly.

          James raises his eyebrows. Nat takes her hand off his arm, which alerts him to the fact that she had it there in the first place.

          “Natalia,” he says again. “I—how are you—”

          “Alive?” she says, arching one of her brows. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me they still have you laboring under the delusion that they’re some kind of all-powerful being, do they? They didn’t actually get to kill me when I got out…hard as they tried.”

          “You turned traitor,” he says. His heartrate picks up, and he leans away from her as much as he can in his seat while he’s strapped in. “You…They always said…”

          “I know I have a kill order on my head,” Nat says. “You know I’m better than that. It takes more than some pissed off Soviets to take me out. No, what I want to know is…how come you didn’t recognize me immediately?”

          James stops, and swallows. His eyes dart to where Steve’s sitting across the room. He’s watching him back steadily.

          “I have a…memory problem,” he starts. Then he sighs. “It’s…hard to explain.”

          Nat settles back in her seat, crosses her arms. James sighs again.

          “Don’t,” he warns her. He can feel Steve’s eyes still on them. “I’m not always…me.”

          “Steve thinks you’re his best friend,” Nat says, eyes keen on the looks they keep shooting one another across the carrier. “Back again, good as new. That’s not completely true. Is it?”

          James shakes his head, slowly.

          “I am…sometimes,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s like sometimes I go blank, like I’m just blacking out, and I don’t remember anything. It’s like I wake up…somebody else. And then time passes, and I’m me again.”

          “You’ve been with us all day,” Nat points out. “Did you just wake up?”

          James shakes his head, but not because he disagrees.

          “I haven’t been awake since last night,” he says, “at dinner. I think I wake up as him, though. Whoever Steve’s looking for.”

          “Bucky,” she offers.

          James inclines his head. “That’s his name. He calls me…James.”

          “James Barnes,” she says, realization thick in her voice.

          James nods jerkily. “He kept calling me by my full name. I didn’t like it, and he was uncomfortable when I wasn’t called anything. So we settled on this.”

          Nat tilts her head at him, considering. James doesn’t know what else to say.

          And then she says, calmly, “Okay.”

          James blinks at her. “Okay?”

          “Here’s what you’re gonna do,” Nat says. She always sounds so smooth and sure of herself, James can’t tell whether she actually has a good plan or if she’s just faking the knowing authority in her voice. Her volume is significantly lower when she leans in and adds, “Don’t tell the rest of the team, not yet. They already think Steve’s making a big mistake bringing you along, and they don’t even know you’re part…you. I don’t know how you got past SHIELD clearance—”

          “I’m hard to diagnose,” James says wryly.

          Nat cracks a small smile.

          “I guess you are,” she agrees. “The PTSD they got down, but this…”

          “I’ve been…him, all day,” says James. “There was nothing to get cleared. How could they have known that I was...there? Just dormant?”

          “Guess SHIELD isn’t as good as they used to be, right now,” Nat says wryly. She sighs. “Look, I’m not going to out you. Steve clearly thinks you’re with us, both sides of you, and it isn’t my business to be trading other people’s secrets anymore. But remember this: I’ll be watching you. You step one toe out of line—make me think there’s _any_ reason that you might be a security risk, to this team or to SHIELD or to the U.S., _anything_ —and you’re gonna wish it was the government that found you out first. You got me?”

          James blinks slowly at her. Then a slow smile overtakes him, until it’s so wide that Nat drops her crossed arms and her brow pulls together.

          “I thought you _were_ the government,” James drawls.

          It takes her a second. Then her composure drops just a tick, and she snorts and smacks him on the arm.

          “You know,” she says, “you’d think with everything you’ve been through, at least one half of you would learn how to _behave_.”

          James gives a startled laugh. Before he can do anything else, Nat’s already unbuckling and making her way back across the carrier, throwing him a small grin over her shoulder.

          Nat makes Steve scoot over so she can join the game of cards he’s in, but Steve hands her his deck and gets up. He’s not subtle in how fast he gets back over to James, taking Nat’s recently vacated seat and sitting down, leaning close to him.

          “What happened?” Steve asks. Next to Nat’s cool demeanor, his composure seems nearly frantic in comparison. “What did she say to you?”

          “It’s okay,” James says. He puts his hand on Steve’s arm, attempting for a bracing gesture. Steve blinks down at the point of contact, then looks back up at James’s face.

          “James,” he says, startled. His wild gaze swings over to Nat, than back to him again. “Does she—?”

          “She does,” he confirms, nodding gravely. “But it’s okay. I…knew her. In another life.”

          Steve tilts his head at him.

          “You told me, you know.” It comes out in a strange undertone, like a secret passed between them. “You…or I guess, Bucky did. He explained all of it to me.”

          James nods slowly. He takes his hand off Steve’s arm.

          “I told Natalia,” he says, “everything. She said she wouldn’t tell anyone, as long as I stayed in line. And she doesn’t think _we_ should tell anyone, either.”

          Steve sighs. His head dips closer, and it’s easy for James to lean his forehead to Steve’s in quiet commiseration. It’s easy, too, to take the hands Steve is nervously twisting in his lap, and silently cup them together in his own.

          “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Steve says. His gaze skitters across the room—James can’t tell exactly who it’s landing on when he adds, “Some of them might not be as understanding as Natasha.”

          James snorts. “Natalia is what passes for understanding, these days?”

          Steve huffs a quiet laugh back. “Talk about desperate times, huh?”

          Whatever witty retort James didn’t have is interrupted by Sam, who chooses that moment to saunter over, look at the way they’ve positioned themselves curled around each other, and arch an eyebrow and say, “So…best friends, huh?”

          James isn’t sure if he’s antagonistic or not—he bares his teeth, ready to fight. But Steve just kicks out at him playfully and grumbles in a way James knows to be more embarrassedly happy than anything else, and he says, “Shut up, Sam.”

          Sam laughs—a big, good-natured, happy laugh—and winks at them. “At ease, Captain.” And he walks away again.

          It’s such a stupid, simple thing to alleviate the tension, but even that—just the team knowing this one thing, now—and James looks around and sees them smiling at him. They have this secret of his now, if not the others. For the first time, James feels part of something he was invited to, part of something he actually wants to join.

 

          The helicarrier touches down near midnight. Everybody’s restless and relentless energy simmered long ago, replaced by waves and waves of bone-deep tiredness to which even James is not immune. They stumblingly agree to meet back up tomorrow for a proper celebration dinner, and head off on their separate ways (a lot of them go the same way, back to Avengers Tower where James guesses some of them, if not most, acquiesced to live.) to be reconvened when they’re less likely to fall asleep in their plates.

          Steve takes James back to the apartment, but he’s barely two steps inside before he sighs loudly and collapses on the couch.

          “I can’t move for a week,” Steve says plaintively.

          James snorts and moves off into the kitchen to find something small to fill his stomach.

          “Some soldier,” he teases.

          Steve makes a noise of mild amusement from the couch. “Hey, some of us had to actually infiltrate the building. Not just skulk around outside it.”

          James leans his head back into the living room to grin at him, all his teeth showing.

          “SHIELD’s orders,” he says. Steve rolls his eyes.

          “Yeah, yeah. You’ll find any excuse in the book.”

          James eventually finds some leftover linguini that he guesses will have to do, although the thought of it doesn’t quite sate his appetite, and he reheats it in the microwave although he takes his time figuring out the buttons. If possible, he always opts to use the stove, but he doesn’t have the patience for it now.

          Steve sits up and reaches eagerly for his bowl when James brings it out to him, and he rolls his eyes as he sits on the couch next to him and watches Steve dig in with a kind of vigor that impresses even him.

          “Sheesh,” James mutters.

          Steve raises his eyebrows at him. “We can’t all have the manners and wherewithal of somebody who’s waited seventy years for a decent meal.”

          “Which one of us has actually been going hungry, huh?”

          “Which one of us actually remembers living through the Depression?”

          James shoulders him, making Steve laugh as he tips to the side. James smiles back in automatic response.

          “Play a game with me,” Steve ventures, nodding towards his TV where there are several consoles set up underneath on the shelves.

          James picks something stupid and cartoonish—Mario Kart, because he likes the art on the cover. Steve grins when he sees it, and when he nods, James pops it into the console.

          He doesn’t know how to play, not at all, but it’s fun anyway. Steve wins all the rounds except the ones that they play against CPUs, and James keeps getting turned around and going the wrong way or falling off cliffs, and it doesn’t matter because after awhile he finds himself laughing. Steve is too, until after one particularly spectacular loss and James is laughing and he turns to share his joy with Steve and it’s like something in Steve shifts, looking at him then, and his mouth downturns slightly. He reaches up like he’s going to touch the corner of James’s mouth, then stops himself. He folds his hands back on his lap and looks down at them, twisting his fingers together.

          James says nothing. He looks at him for a long time.

          “I can’t tell,” Steve says. He shakes his head, annoyed. “I can’t tell if…”

          The knowledge of it comes to him like a wave that sinks him under. James sighs and puts his controller down on the coffee table. He leans back into the couch, running his fingers through his hair.

          “It’s still me,” he says quietly. “The—uh, James.”

          “Oh.” Steve puts his bowl down too. He rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t…Just the way you were smiling for a second. I couldn’t tell.”

          James swallows hard around the sudden lump in his throat. He can’t even smile without it being suspicious. In the background, the music of the level selection screen goes on and on and on.

          “It’s okay,” he says quietly.

          There is nothing left to say after that. It’s not surprising to him when Steve picks up his cold pasta and finishes his dinner in silence, eyes staring ahead without looking at him, or when he gets up to put their dishes in the sink. All the while, he doesn’t say a word. There’s really nothing left to say.

 

          James gives Steve a couple of minutes to himself in the bedroom before he gets up from the couch. He goes to the bathroom first, to shower off the day and ready himself for bed, before he joins Steve in the other room. Steve is dressed for bed—kind of—but he’s just standing by his dresser, touching the things there with light fingers. It’s a second before James recognizes what he’s doing: softly putting his hands on a music box, a picture frame. Memories.

          James doesn’t have those memories, though. He’s just wondering if he should quietly go out and leave Steve to his solitary past, but then Steve turns around.

          “It’s okay,” he says gently. He beckons to James with one hand. “You can come over.”

          It seems like there’s more there, beneath the lines. James can read the undertones: Steve wants him to go over. So he does.

          The music box, he has no idea about why it’s important to Steve. Even when he opens it, and the twinkling tune pulses out, he doesn’t recognize the significance of any of the trinkets Steve’s keeping inside. There’s a beaded necklace; a thimble; a coin; countless other little bobbles with no inherent worth, but which clearly mean something to Steve. It feels strangely intrusive for him to see these things and not understand, to peek at Steve’s memories without sharing them himself. After a long moment, James snaps the music box shut. He moves on to the picture Steve was touching, but as his fingers graze the frame, he falters.

          “This is us,” James says, nonplussed.

          They’re younger; both are clean-shaven, with none of the stubble that graces his face now present in the picture. Steve is also ridiculously small. A laugh bubbles up from James, and he presses his fingers against the picture itself.

          “I don’t remember this day,” he says, shaking his head, “but you look funny. Were you really _that_ tiny?”

          “I was,” Steve says. He’s smiling too. “You should have seen the hoops I had to jump through to get this off the Smithsonian exhibit. They weren’t happy, but technically it’s my property, so…at least I let them keep the rest of it up. It was a more than fair trade.”

          “Why are you wearing that stupid baseball cap?”

          Steve laughs again. “It was yours. You kept bugging me to wear something so I wouldn’t get sunburned while we were out at Coney Island all day. I stole your hat to be a smart ass.”

          “Was I mad?”

          “Nah,” says Steve. “I think you just thought I looked too cute to be mad at.”

          James looks up at him, a little breathless. Steve is grinning over at him in full force. James quickly regains his composure, and he knocks at Steve’s arm.

          “Guess some things never change,” he mutters. His gaze skitters to the side, but he can feel Steve watching him still, and his cheeks are warm.

          “Guess not,” Steve says.

          Something in the way he says it, so intensely, makes James look up at him. He doesn’t know how, but he knows their minds have strayed to the same place. Kindred, even after all this time.

          “Be careful,” James whispers.

          Steve’s hands are already cupping his face.

          “I will be,” he promises, and he kisses him.

          It’s somehow soft and hard at once: he’s gentle in his pressure, in the way he catches James’s lips, but James can feel his desperation, that same need echoed deep in his gut that’s telling him to hold on, to make sure that Steve isn’t going anywhere soon. James clutches at Steve’s forearms and brings him closer, letting Steve stagger him back against the dresser to press down on him with his whole body.

          James has been in and out of a lot of different situations, but this is all new territory for him. He has to rely on instinct: the shiver of his skin, the tugging in his gut, the way his blood goes over warm when Steve presses his mouth to James’s mouth, to his jaw, to his neck. James doesn’t like it as much there, with his teeth bared too close to his pulse—but he tells him so, murmurs it like a secret passed between lovers rather than something grisly that James has to fight in the primal parts of himself, and Steve backs off with little jerky nods and goes back to kissing him everywhere else.

          It’s instinct still that makes him curl his fingers into the skin of Steve’s hips. The angular cut of his bone is showed off neatly where his shirt rides up, a plain white undershirt that he had probably been wearing all day beneath his SHIELD suit. James grazes his knuckles there and feels Steve shiver; he presses the pads of his fingers there and Steve presses closer to him. James runs his hands up his sides slightly, holds him tighter. Steve leans away enough that he can raise his arms above his head, and he waits.

          “If you want,” he offers, tilting his head to the side.

          James looks at him for just a moment; then he curls his fingers into the edge of Steve’s shirt and pulls it clear off his head, and in the next second he’s kissing him again, rougher, harder. Steve makes a muffled, guttural sound in his throat and cups the side of James’s neck, his thumb stroking in tiny circles against the knob of his jaw, and it makes James’s knees weak but in a good way and not at all like he’s out of control. When Steve pulls back to look at him, his hands curled into the edges of the sleep shirt James stole, he nods and lets Steve take that off of him in turn.

          “We’ll go as slow as you want,” Steve promises (half-gasping, since James is pressing unperfected kisses to his throat, where Steve doesn’t seem to mind it). “If this is all you want…this is good to me.”

          James pauses for just a second, his face tucked into Steve’s neck. He breathes, “Thank you.”

          Steve strokes his hair with one hand. Then the moment is gone, and James kisses him hard again, and he forgets that they ever put the brakes on for even a second.

          They stand there by the dresser for a long time, learning the taste of each other’s mouths and the feeling of each other’s hands on their bodies. Then Steve bites roughly at his jaw and curls his fingers into James’s stolen sweatpants and whispers, “Yes?”

          James says, “Yes,” and he gets a second of Steve’s feral grin against his skin before Steve wheels him around, pulling him hard by the sweats, and throws him back onto the bed. James goes—with a jolt.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          He wakes up startled, with a body on his and a mouth on his neck and hands all over his body. For a moment it’s a strange throwback to any old year in the twenties, when he used to black in from too much whiskey with half a hangover and somebody in his bed. Then he realizes it’s Steve, and his stomach does about a dozen flips in under five seconds. Bucky pushes at his chest until Steve lifts up onto his hands and stares down at him, breathless.

          Steve stares him down, falters, swallows visibly. “Bucky?”

          His heart drops a little. Bucky nods small.

          “I—you said—” Steve is flushed completely red now, and he’s scrambling to put more distance between them, but Bucky just laughs and pulls at his hips and arms and murmurs, “Yes, you idiot, _yes_ ,” until Steve’s skin flushes back pale and he’s kissing him again, exactly the way he should be all the time, exactly the way he should never stop doing if Bucky had any say in cosmic justice whatsoever.

          Bucky rolls them over so he’s on top of Steve, pinning him down to the bed with his weight where his hips drop down and curves into Steve’s. Steve makes a broken groan in his throat and his hands drop down to Bucky’s hips, pressing him further down as he raises his own hips up.

          “Jesus, it would be hard to say no to this,” Bucky mumbles. Steve laughs breathlessly.

          “I wasn’t going to…” He pauses to collect his thoughts, and Bucky wants to give him space to think but he can’t stop putting his mouth everywhere he sees. “I wouldn’t have done all this without asking you first.”

          Bucky snorts. “If he wasn’t comfortable, you’d know. You’d be bloody by now.”

          “No, I meant—asking _you_.” Steve pulls back to look at him, his gaze steady and too intense, looking straight at him like that. “I was going to wait until you were…this you again.”

          “Well, do I look like I’m complaining?” Bucky asks. He buries his fingers in Steve’s hair and pulls him back to kiss him more. “Jesus fucking shit. You’d think I was never twenty in room next to yours, thinking about doing this the whole fucking time.”

          “You were?” Steve sounds shocked; it’s kind of funny, actually.

          “Oh, like you weren’t thinking about fooling around with me?” Bucky returns, and he waits for Steve’s soft laugh before he leans in again. The kiss is strange, both of them grinning too hard for it to be perfect, but it’s kind of good because of that too.

          When Steve turns them again to press Bucky into the bed, Bucky goes willingly. It’s everything he ever had fantasies about when he was a kid, Steve’s sturdy weight on top of him, Steve chasing his mouth every time he goes to pull away for a second to catch his breath. Steve wanting him back.

          And then Steve’s trailing his mouth down his body instead, kissing at his neck, trailing his tongue along his chest and down his stomach. When he reaches the band of his stolen sweatpants, though, he stops. His fingers curl into the waistband and he looks up at Bucky with his red mouth and wide eyes, and he asks his question in the tilt of his head and his silence.

          “Christ, strip me already,” Bucky gasps, and Steve does.

          He pulls his sweats off in one quick motion, which is about when Bucky realizes that he isn’t wearing boxers. They both pause for a second, their eyes meeting. Bucky’s smile is just beneath the surface there, waiting to see if he can reign it in before it escapes wide. Although Steve’s face is blank, Bucky can tell that the same almost-laugh is bubbling up inside him too.

          “Does he always go commando when he’s wearing your stuff?” Bucky asks.

          It’s not the first time he’s woken up after his other self dressed him, but he usually has the decency to take some boxers out of the drawer that Steve cleared out for him in his dresser, from the twelve-pack they bought for cheap at Walmart right after he first showed up and they realized he couldn’t keep wearing the one dirty pair he had, nor go without completely.

          Steve just grins at him.

          “No idea,” he says, sounding gleeful with this new information, “but it makes things easier for us, huh?”

          “Fuck you,” Bucky laughs. He reaches his hand out and cards it through Steve’s hair, cradling his face in his palm. His thumb rubs against his temple. “Come here.”

          Steve crawls back over him and kisses him, his lips soft but insistent on Bucky’s. Bucky presses his fingers into Steve’s back, low, pressing him down against him just to feel him there. He’s not used to having somebody under his hands, but he thinks he likes the feel of it—that warm body on top of him, that heart thumping against his own in steady beats. He’s real and there are others here with him too, experiencing the world as he is now, reminding him that he’s alive.

          “Talk to me,” Steve murmurs, his lips brushing Bucky’s cheek when they move. “Tell me what you want.”

          “All I want right now,” Bucky says, his hands hauling down to grope at Steve’s ass, “is for you to be as naked as I am right now.”

          “That, I can do.”

          Letting Steve pull away from him is one of the hardest things he’s had to do for awhile, or it feels that way at least. Bucky only gives him enough time to get all of his clothes off—and barely—before he sits up and reaches out to pull at Steve’s hips. Laughing, Steve falls back on top of him messily, imperfectly; they both laugh as they shift themselves together again comfortably, letting their legs fall and curl together, wrapping each other back in their arms. Eventually Steve’s hands start to wander, and Bucky doesn’t stop him—he arches his back up even closer towards Steve, and Steve’s roving hand first cups his ass, then travels along to the front of him. Bucky’s breath holds for just a second.

          When Steve first wraps a hand around him, it’s like an electric shock that goes straight to Bucky’s heart. It jolts him, his blood on fire, and he gasps Steve’s name against his neck when he presses his face there desperately. Steve presses his mouth to Bucky’s, to his cheek, to his neck, to his collar—to everywhere that his lips can reach from where he’s holding Bucky close.

          Bucky wants to help him, but he can’t—he can’t do anything but hold tightly to Steve’s arm and pray that he’ll wake up and none of this will be a dream. More than that, he wants more than anything for Steve to feel the bright, pulsing love that’s bursting inside of him. For that, he finally finds it in himself to wake his brain up and get his hands to move.

          They find all of Steve’s body first—his chest, his arms, the soft but sturdy insides of his thighs. He traces the roughened bottoms of his palms across everywhere that he can, feeling Steve shiver with every press of his hand, feeling his body moving against his own. Finally, he gives Steve what he clearly wants—and treasures the gasp that arises when he does, wrapping his own hand around Steve’s hard, waiting cock and jerking him off to the same rhythm that Steve is doing for him. Their arms are crossed, their wrists knocking together and it’s messy and imperfect but the way that Bucky’s name sounds coming out of Steve’s mouth is more musical than the best sound he’s ever heard. He knows that the resounding, beautiful feeling that’s singing in his veins is the same one that’s in Steve’s right now, this shared bliss between them giving birth to something new and wonderful between them. Bucky thought that he already knew every part of Steve—he thought that there was nothing else to learn about him, and no way he could love him any more than he already did—but he was wrong.

          Bucky comes first, Steve’s name on his tongue and the hot press of his body against Bucky’s the only thing he can think about the entire time that he’s shaking his way through the aftershocks. He keeps jacking Steve—exactly the way that makes him smile like that, exactly how he can hear and see and feel Steve likes—until Steve does too, pressing his open mouth to Bucky’s neck and breathing hard all the while.

          After, they lay down together. It’s hot in the room, but the blankets have all been kicked or tumbled off the bed, so it’s just the two of them on the bottom sheets. There’s no words that need to be passed between them; no looks that need to be shared. Just Bucky and Steve laying side by side, their arms aligned in the middle, and this new feeling bloomed between them that they have all the time in the world to explore.

 

          Eventually the world gets quiet, and Bucky’s heart isn’t beating so hard anymore. He thinks Steve drifted off long ago, but it’s hard to tell; he mumbles and shifts when Bucky gets up to get a wet towel to clean them off, and presses his naked body closer to him when he climbs back into bed. Still, they say nothing. Bucky lays down in the dark and feels the night slowly start to seep into his blood.

          It’s just them curled together on the bed, and the vast night before them that presses into their room and holds them tightly in its embrace. In the silence that naturally ensues there, Bucky waits for a long, long time in the dark. The moon is shining from underneath the door, out from the living room where there’s the only window that’s used with any regularity. He hears Steve’s deep breathing, and the night around him, and he waits. He waits for an hour, Steve curled against his side, until the weight on his chest gets too heavy and he thinks that he can’t keep it in anymore, and maybe nobody will hear it, but maybe the universe will.

          He can only say it because he thinks Steve is sleeping. Steve is sleeping, and maybe that great vast universe isn’t, and maybe he won’t feel so constricted all the time if he lets it out—even if it’s only like this. He says it in a whisper, like little birds floating up to the ceiling, lost in the dark where no one can see them.

          Bucky takes a deep breath. He lets it out again.

          He whispers, “I tried to kill myself.”

          He waits now too, and listens. He so desperately hopes somebody—anybody, even that man drunkenly screaming on the street below, even the woman he can hear giggling all the way up from their apartment—can hear him, but at the same time he hopes that nobody does after all. Like the whisper never existed…and if somebody hears him, it will have. These aren’t the types of words that people let ghost by; they’re the words people worry over, the kinds people would send him away for. And Bucky doesn’t want to go away. Just the word: _away_ —it sends his heart racing just a tiny notch faster. He’s been away. He can’t go back to that Other place, even if it isn’t the same Other place as before.

          For awhile, there is nothing. Just Steve’s steady, sleepy breathing. The ticking of their thrift store clock—an old-timey one that Steve let him hang up because he had found it and brought it home so that must mean something good, right? Like nesting or something. Bucky knows he thinks like this but it doesn’t matter if he gets a piece a home out of it—on the wall, and the sound of their refrigerator humming, and the video game system they hadn’t shut off from earlier still abuzz, wasting power, wasting money that Bucky guesses they have now.

          Then, like more little birds in the dark—thousands and thousands, taking flight, blotting out the sky, so obviously _there_ , so unforgettable—Steve’s voice floats to him.

          “What?”

          It’s not hard and judgmental, just detached, the way Steve is when he’s worried. Except Bucky doesn’t think he’s worried. He sounds the way Steve sounds when he’s assessing a situation—but he doesn’t want to be assessed. He’s not a situation—in a couple of hours, maybe he will be; he doesn’t know who’ll have control of his head then. But Bucky isn’t one.

          He breathes out noisily and says it again, and now there are eggs where those birds where, more and more of them, piling up. They won’t hatch; they won’t fly; they just sit there, so present, something he has to confront again and again and again.

          Bucky’s next breath sounds almost like a laugh.

          “I tried to kill myself,” he repeats. “Years ago, Jesus, so many fucking years ago. Back when they first…had me.”

          Steve doesn’t say anything. Bucky can still hear his steady breathing though, the way he definitely isn’t holding his breath, and he takes that to be his good sign to continue.

          “Actually, I didn’t try then. Christ, but I wanted to. I wasn’t allowed anything back then. No knives for dinner—they fed me through tubes anyway. No bedsheets. Nothing. I don’t think there were precautions against… _that_. They were just depriving me anyway, and it worked out.” He snorts a humorless laugh and says it again, “ _Worked out_. Anyway, I thought about it all the time though. I knew time was passing like crazy, and I just wanted it to be over. Pain and more pain. That’s all the future seemed like back then.

          “Then there was this night in…I don’t know. ’73, maybe? ’72? Anyway, they had…broken me since then. I was out on a mission in Milan. Man, you would have loved it, Stevie. It’s exactly as glitzy as you’re picturing. All these bright city lights and those seventies girls dressed up like movie stars.”

          “Is that why you did it?” Steve snorts. “Because you were too gay for all those movie star girls?”

          Bucky laughs at then, and his whole back arches with it, lifting him off the bed beautifully. He reaches out to slap at Steve’s bare chest with the back of his hand.

          “No,” he says. “No, I…I came back to the surface. Just for a minute, you know, you know how I get. Man, I was still kind of there back then. I was still just me, _all_ of me. It was different than it’s like right now, we were just fighting for control, but I was all there. And I got back control for just the tiniest fucking second, and I remember…I went crazy. It was nighttime, I remember that, and I was supposed to be scouting some old rich socialite guy for this mission. But then I came to, and I just fucked off for the night instead. You know me.”

          He is talking more to the ceiling now than to Steve. It’s easier that way, to tell the whole sad story to their dark and far-away bedroom ceiling, than it is to look at Steve’s face, at this beautiful face of the beautiful man he loves, and tell him that the dark, ugly thing inside him almost won, that he almost let it—let _himself_ —do that to his own body, however sick and monstrous it had become. He feels like Steve’s heart might have hurt through the eons separating them back then, when the deed was done, even though Steve was frozen and had thought him dead; he feels like he might feel that way now, if it ever was the other way around.

          He clears his throat and goes on.

          “Anyway, I hit the bars first. Not really a surprise, I guess. But guess fucking what?”

          Steve doesn’t answer right away, not until it becomes clear that the pause is for him to fill. Bucky looks over at him.

          “Supersoldier serum,” Steve says. He still sounds all even in a way that Bucky has come to dread. The years have changed him though; now Bucky doesn’t understand all the layers in Steve’s voice. There are pieces there he doesn’t quite get.

          Bucky nods blindly at what he’s said. He can feel the corners of his eyes pricking now, and he blinks rapidly. He can’t do this looking at Steve. He has to turn back to the ceiling just to get the lump in his throat to ebb enough for him to keep talking. Now that he’s started, it would be maybe worse for him to stop.

          “We can’t get drunk, Steve! How fucked up is that? But you know what? You know what does work?”

          Steve sounds strangled, like he would rather do anything other than answer him. But Bucky asks, so he does. Just like he knew he would.

          “Get high,” Steve manages. “We can—we can get high.”

          “We can get high,” Bucky confirms, and he nods sharply, fiercely, over and over again until it’s meaningless. “I broke into some college dorm and swiped a bunch of shit. No idea what I took, some massive fucking cocktail of all kinds of the worst drugs. The only one I know for sure was in there were these hallucinogens.”

          “What did you take, Bucky?” Steve’s voice is deliberately measured, but Bucky is still pretty sure he has the same exact lump in his throat.

          “Who knows,” Bucky says, throwing his flesh arm out so that it flops off the bed, a useless motion. “The only one I know for sure is shrooms. Some of the shit might not even have _worked_ , but those did. Then I went into the bathroom, having the worst fucking trip of my life, and I downed a whole bottle of pills I found in their room. Then a second one, just to make sure I did the trick right. You never know with this serum, it’s tricky.”

          He feels the bed shift beside him, and Steve fumbling around. Then he feels his fingers slipped through his own. It’s the metal hand, but it’s been programmed so that it can still feel—temperature and weight and so many other things, so Bucky knows what he should be feeling, in that phantom limb that isn’t there. He squeezes Steve’s fingers back.

          “But you didn’t die,” Steve croaks. “What happened?”

          “I fucking threw up,” Bucky laughs. “Turns out that even with our metabolism burning off all that liquor, I still fucking threw it all up to get it out of my body. And with it came the drugs and all those pills. Then I passed out on the bathroom floor. By the time I came to, getting kicked by all these fucking terrified undergrads ‘cause some crazy homeless guy was passed out in their dorm bathroom at six a.m., I was sober and way too chicken shit to try it again. I guess I was kind of relieved. Then the Winter Soldier came back and I just…pretended like it never happened the next time I was…sort of there. I completed the mission. Nobody knew about my little detour, so it didn’t have to happen if I could just forget about it. If only one person knows about something, and they forget all about the whole thing, does it still count?”

          “Yes,” says Steve instantly. He squeezes Bucky’s metal hand harder in his own. Bucky looks at him; his eyes are shining even in the dark. “ _Yes_ , it does. You didn’t die. You’re here. You’re with me.”

          “But I didn’t forget,” Bucky sighs towards the ceiling. Finally, finally, tears begin to spill down his cheeks. “I’m still right fucking here, and it still fucking happened. I’m glad it didn’t work, don’t get me wrong. It was just a fucked up accident. Some stupid thing I did when I was high. But I _wanted_ to. I was so fucked up that I _wanted_ to. And I can’t talk to anyone because they’ll put me away for shit that doesn’t even matter anymore.”

          He expects Steve to tell him again how he didn’t do it, that it’s okay because nothing happened, or that it does matter because he wanted it at some point and he could want to again. But Steve doesn’t say anything. Eventually Bucky stops waiting for the lecture and relaxes back into their bed, tears still on his cheeks—drying but replenishing here and there as he thinks back on his confession, remembers it all in vivid details—but his chest feels freer and he thinks about Steve, and about Steve’s fingers in his own. He traces the dark, nearly indiscernible ceiling with his gaze and begins to play with Steve’s fingers.

          Then he hears Steve say, “I almost jumped off a building once.”

          It’s so unexpected that Bucky automatically laughs. Then he claps his hand over his mouth and turns his head to look at Steve, eyes wide. Steve is grinning, though.

          Bucky does not ask why. Instead he says, “Why didn’t you?”

          Steve grins even harder, showing all his teeth, and they’re perfect and straight and glint white in the night of their bedroom. The perfect teeth for the perfect, all-American man. The symbol of hope and peace, someone for children to look up to, someone for whom nothing ever goes wrong.

          Steve says, “I remembered that I’ve done that before, and it wouldn’t actually kill me.”

          They just look at each other for a couple of seconds and then, at the same time, they burst out laughing.

          “Fuck,” Bucky gasps when they finally start to calm down, “What in the actual _hell_.”

          “So we’re not dead because you threw up and I can’t even jump off a building right,” Steve concludes, and it sends them into another long fit of laughter that takes forever to come down from. At some point Bucky has to pull his hand free from where him and Steve are squeezing each other harder than they ever have before so that he can cover his face with both his hands, because this is seriously one of the worst conversations he’s ever had and he can’t believe he’s having it and _laughing_.

          “This is _not_ funny, Steve,” he says, mostly because he feels like he should make that clear. “Jesus. If anyone heard us laughing about this we’d be committed faster that someone who starts singing outside of church.”

          “Shit,” says Steve, but he’s still laughing so he kind of hiccups the word, and Bucky can feel how red his face is from his own hysterics. “I don’t really think there’s anything funny about this at all.”

          When they fall silent again, it feels different than before. Neither of them are sleeping, and they both know it, but there’s this lightness to the air that Bucky can’t describe. He feels like he knows more about Steve now than he has learned in the entire time since coming back. Even though they’ve talked about so much and slept together and _actually_ slept together, it’s now that they have this between them that Bucky feels like he sort of knows the new Steve Rogers, just like the new Steve Rogers has begun to know him.

          It takes a long time for the grins to fade off their faces, and even longer for the delighted bubble they’re in to soften. In the dark and the ensuing quiet, Bucky rolls onto his side. He touches Steve’s arm with his skin-and-bone fingers, a brush of a motion.

          “Is that pizza place two blocks over still open?” Bucky asks.

          Steve covers his hand with his own.

          “Yeah, Buck,” he whispers. “We can go there for lunch tomorrow.”

          Contented now, they roll into their respective sleeping positions and begin to drift off. Steve’s leg is touching Bucky’s beneath the covers. He feels, finally, like he could make a home here, like he doesn’t have to just be Steve’s guest; he could live here too. This could be his home too.

          The eggs all hatch. The baby birds stretch their wings to leave, and Bucky flips the nest right out of the tree.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          James has a good day; he gets to wake up beside Steve, and even though he wasn’t there for the fun part last night, he gets to wake up to all the good aches and satiation. He gets to be there, too, for the fun part this morning, when Steve steps into his shower and presses him against the tiles and kisses him so deeply that he’s breathless even before Steve reaches down to take care of him good. They get pizza for lunch, from this really cool place a couple blocks over, and Steve has this kind of sad and meaningful look in his eye the whole time, and James can tell that the whole production is kind of important for some reason, but Steve doesn’t say why. He does twine their legs together beneath the table though, his foot rubbing against James’s calf in a gentle way that does really good things to his heart in his chest.

          He is less happy in the afternoon, when Steve announces that they have to go a dinner with the team to celebrate the major win they had yesterday in Poland. Actually, Steve phrases it more like a first prize: since they did so well, and the team is beginning to ease into a comfortable place with him, James gets to come along and it will be a really good bonding experience for everyone, or something along those lines that James stops listening to pretty early on (the way Steve’s mouth moves is way more interesting than the words he’s saying, honestly, but James would never tell him any of that). Either way, James is kind of hoping to get triggered back into Bucky for a couple of hours, but by seven o’clock he’s used up all his procrastination time and Steve’s sitting in a nice shirt, tapping his foot and clicking his tongue and looking at his watch every couple of minutes, so James figures he has to take the hit and go along.

          He can’t find any nice clothes—he doesn’t even have any clothes to call his own—and none of Steve’s nicer shirts fit. There’s a miniature tiff that ensues when James insists on wearing the hoodie and jeans he had on when he first found Steve (“I _knew_ you didn’t throw them out! You’re so sentimental,” is swiftly followed by, “Don’t be such an ass. Just wear something that doesn’t look like it came straight out of the dumpster behind the crackhouse!”) but it devolves into Steve pulling, annoyed, at his clothes and James laughing and swatting at his hands, and he can’t really tell who’s being playfully flirty and who’s just annoyed, and he guesses that Steve can’t either because eventually they both give in with an, “Alright, _alright_ ,” and Steve stops pestering him and James puts on one of Steve’s slightly-too-big formal jackets instead of his ratty, perpetually-dirty (no matter how often he washes it) sweatshirt.

          Even though they only have to go across the street, James can tell that they’re late to whatever team dinner they had going on. Aside from the fact that nobody else from the team is present on their way up, JARVIS keeps hissing snarky asides at them in the elevator about how upset Pepper’s going to be with their tardiness. Yet when they step off into the (vast, fancy) dining room and everybody goes quiet, Pepper’s the first to get to her feet and enfold first Steve, then James into embraces. James’s seems more cursory, more professional; yet Pepper still offers him a warm smile and a kiss on the cheek.

          “Please, sit down,” she says, gesturing at the table where everybody else is sitting and staring at them openly.

          “We’re sorry we’re late,” says Steve. He pushes James at a slightly faster than normal pace towards their seats, although where he pauses to drape his jacket over his chair, James sits right down.

          “It’s nothing, really,” says Pepper.

          Her smile seems genuine, and she waves her hand in the air as though to physically combat Steve’s words. He has that way about him, James muses wryly: Aggressive politeness.

          Steve glances at James; beneath the table, his thigh presses against James’s. James breathes out, steadily.

          “So what did we miss?” says Steve, clapping his hands (somewhat grandly, in James’s opinion) and looking around at his friends.

          Nat and Pepper look at each other; James catches it and glances between the two of them, unsure. His eyes narrow. Although he’s not an expert at Pepper just yet, and he’s had decades to forget all he knew about Nat as she grew into a different person without him, and even though Nat is one of the best spies in the world—James understands the look that shoots between them.

          “You told her,” he announces.

          Steve’s gaze swings to the two women. James’s mouth thins out in displeasure. Nat and Pepper’s gazes both flick to James at once, and Pepper’s cheeks color minutely.

          “Not me,” Nat says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes are fixed accusingly now on Sam. When James looks at him, he holds up his hands defensively.

          “Nat, you know?” Steve says. Before James can stop him, he goes on: “And Sam? Wait, when the hell did Bucky tell any of you about James?”

          These people have a way about them: even when they’re not talking, something about the way they move and the way they are around each other is loud. There’s meaning to every gesture, every look. Now is the first time James can remember any single one of them being as silent as they seem at first glance.

          Stark speaks first: “Who the living hell is James?”

          Nat says, “Oh, no,” and promptly pushes her chair back, gets up, and leaves the room.

          Sam looks after her and says, “Somebody tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

          James turns his glare on Steve instead.

          “What the fuck,” he says. He gets up and puts his hands down hard on the table. “What the _fuck_.”

          “Oh, shit.” Steve looks up at James beseechingly—at any other time, and maybe with any other part of him controlling his head, it would have worked better than a charm to get James to forgive him instantly. But now his blood is thick and fast in his veins, and even Steve can’t be charming enough for that. “What was she talking about?”

          “She meant…” He grits his teeth, looks around the table. He fixes his eyes forcibly on Steve and takes a deep breath. “She meant that we were together. _God_.”

          Steve’s lips part.

          “Oh, shit.”

          “Yeah. _Oh shit_ ,” says James. He pushes his chair back roughly; it scrapes along the floor with a loud, grating noise.

          “Who the hell is James?” Stark demands again.

          Clint and Wanda are watching them all like a very interesting game of tennis, swinging their heads back and forth as it all unfolds. Pepper has her hand over her mouth. James ignores them all and snarls at Stark. Although very few words have passed between them, and no real information was unveiled, James recognizes how clear it is to everybody that something major just slipped.

          Very deliberately and none too sweet, James says, “I am out of here.”

          Steve reaches for his arm, but James jerks it away. Without looking at anyone else, he offers a cursory glance of apology to Pepper and storms out of the room. He hears, as he’s leaving, Stark repeat his question a third time, and Pepper tell him to be quiet, as it is not the time. Steve is rambling broken explanations. James lets the door slam.

          It’s a bit of a maze to get out of Avengers Tower, and JARVIS seems to have decided that he does not like James very much, as he’s not only wildly unhelpful but also at times stops being present completely, which, although James admittedly does not know the ins and outs of computers very well (despite being partially robotic himself) he’s relatively sure that JARVIS is only pretending not to be there, as he can’t actually vacate the tower or even a room.

          When James finally gets out onto the street, he slams the front doors so hard that he’s sure that the glass would shatter on any other building that did not have material quite so titanic—but Stark, after all, has access to the strongest and most expensive products in the world. To make up for the missed destruction, James knocks over a couple of garbage cans on the way home, but he does opt not to kill the two petty thieves he sees trying to break into a building. Wryly, he thinks that Steve would be proud.

          He doesn’t have a key or any way into Steve’s building, so he goes up the fire escape again. Although technically SHIELD reinstalled all the security measures on the window, Steve knocked them all out again since James has a penchant for slipping in and out in the middle of the night when he’s been cooped up inside for too long, since it’s quieter and less populated on the streets than in the daytime. Government-cleared or not, the public is a bit less forgiving of sniper-assassins, even if said sniper-assassin was brainwashed and forced to carry out said sniping and assassinations against his will.

          James goes inside and slams the window shut. It makes a satisfying noise, and a long, thin crack snakes its way along the glass. A sickly gratified part of James thinks that Bucky can deal with that tomorrow.

          Steve does not come home for an hour, or for two. Eventually James curls up in his bed, surrounded by his sheets and the smell of him, and goes to sleep.

 

          He wakes up because of the dipping mattress. Without rolling over or even opening his eyes, he’s suddenly awake—awake to the loud, oppressive silence that is him and Steve in bed, both waiting for the other to say something first.

          “I’m sorry,” Steve breathes after a minute.

          James grunts noncommittally. He elbows at Steve lightly, giving himself a moment before he turns over onto his back. He blinks up at the ceiling. He wants to know where Steve’s attention is—if he’s looking at him—but he doesn’t want to turn towards him to check.

          “You didn’t know,” James says, which is as close to an acceptance of his apology as he’ll get—simply dismissing the issue entirely.

          “I still should have—” Steve shakes his head roughly. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just shouldn’t have said anything.”

          “You didn’t know,” James repeats firmly. He waits a beat. “Did they ask?”

          Steve hesitates. He sounds cautious when he says, “They did.”

          “Did you tell them?”

          “I did.”

          James breathes out. “Okay.”

           Steve waits a second. James turns his head towards him.

          “Okay?” Steve asks—quiet.

          “I’d rather they know now. It’s better than…it’s better that it’s quiet.”

          “That we’re not in the middle of a battle, you mean.”

          James sighs. He finds where Steve’s hand is resting on the bed and twines his fingers through Steve’s, carefully.

          “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

          Steve squeezes his hand. “You don’t have to say anything,” he says. It sounds like a promise: _When you don’t have the words, I’ll find them for you._ “Everything’s out there now. You can just…be. However you want to do that, I’ll be there with you.”

          James inhales deeply then lets it out. He makes himself find the energy to snort derisively.

          “Don’t be so sentimental,” he says. He rolls over and presses a kiss to Steve’s hair—tentative, unsure—and leaves his face buried there, against his cheek.

          Steve laughs, soft and beautiful. He untwines their fingers so he can wrap an arm around James’s shoulders and press him more comfortably against his side. For a moment, neither of them says anything at all.

          “I like you a lot,” James admits to the dark. “And I don’t want…for them to make it all go away.”

          Steve hugs him closer for just a second. He sounds so calm when he says, “No one is taking anything away. And whatever does come, we can work through it together. Just like we always have. Since we were kids, and all the times when we were growing up, and now that we found each other again. We’ve had each other’s backs our whole lives. This is no different.”

          “That wasn’t me,” James says hoarsely.

          “It’s always been you and me,” Steve says. “Now shut up and go to sleep. We’ve had a long day, and I for one could use some shuteye.”

          James knows a dismissal when he hears one—but it doesn’t sound harsh, or cruel, or like Steve doesn’t care. And sleep does sound nice—but he has one last thing to say.

          “Tell him…” he whispers. He swallows. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him again. “Tell him that I don’t want to take what he already has.”

          Steve doesn’t answer for a minute. James wonders if Steve’s following his train of thought as closely as he assumed, or if he’s going to have to clarify. He’s not sure he has the wherewithal to do so.

          But Steve just says, “Okay.”

          James just breathes, in and out, a calm, slow rhythm that he’s heard echoed in the beats of Steve’s resting heart. It can’t be wrong. And then, long after Steve’s hold on him is slackened and James knows he’s gone to sleep, he follows Steve quietly into dreams.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          He wakes up curled up with Steve in their bed and under the impression that he missed a whole lot. It’s morning, his favorite time of day, but he’s not sure he wants to hear about the night before.

          He extracts himself carefully from Steve’s arms and rolls out of bed. It’s barely sunrise, and most days Steve would be on a run already with Sam. Whatever happened, Bucky _really_ doesn’t want to know now.

          He heads into the kitchen to start on breakfast. They’re almost out of pancake mix, but he finds enough eggs for omelets and bacon packed away in the fridge. For a second, while he’s just cooking and waiting for the coffee pot to ding, he’s in a bubble where nothing touches him. Just him and the early morning light, alone together in the world.

          Steve still doesn’t wake up when the food and coffee is done, and Bucky knows from a long time growing up together that Steve rarely sleeps in if he doesn’t need it. He puts Steve’s half of breakfast in the microwave for later and sits down to eat.

          After, when he’s in the shower, he hears the bathroom door push open. A small part of him sags in relief—there’s Steve, so everything will be alright. Whatever isn’t fine will be soon.

          He can see Steve, blurry and distorted through the curtain. Steve raps his knuckles on the wall beside the tub.

          “Come in,” says Bucky, laughing a little.

          Steve strips first—his blurry movements seemingly erratic with the distortion—then pulls the curtain back and steps in with him. They don’t say anything, and after a moment, Bucky picks up the soap. Steve turns around. He starts washing him down.

          “The team found out about you and…and James,” says Steve, somewhere between Bucky washing his chest and thinking about kissing him.

          He stops dead. “How?”

          Steve shakes his head. “I’m an idiot, is how,” he says ruefully. “It’s fine, I swear. They’re just…adjusting.”

          “Guess I’m banned from HQ for awhile, huh?” He laughs even though it’s not funny. He looks down. “What did I…uh, what did he…what happened?”

          “Just stormed out,” says Steve with a little shrug. “Honestly, I expected a much bigger explosion. The damage was minimal. My window’s cracked.”

          “Sorry,” says Bucky, because he guesses someone should apologize.

          “Not your fault,” Steve returns. “He, uh…wanted me to give you a message. By the way.”

          Bucky pauses washing Steve’s hair. Steve gently removes the shampoo bottle from Bucky’s hands and spins him around by his shoulders to return the favor. Bucky braces himself.

          “What was it?”

          “He said to tell you that…that he’s not trying to infringe on anything you’ve got going on,” says Steve. “He’s not here to take from you. I think he’s just trying to get by. Same as you.”

          Bucky’s jaw works, and he tries not to snarl. It’s not Steve he’s angry at, anyway.

          “He’s not here to _take_ from me?” he repeats. “He’s already taking from me, Steve! He’s taking my time, and my body, and my own fucking head! How is that not _infringing_?”

          “He’s just lost,” says Steve hastily. “Lean your head back…pass me the soap. Listen, we can work this all out. There’s got to be some way for you both to…for you to be yourself again.”

          “Just stop,” Bucky snaps. He doesn’t like the look on Steve’s face then, like he’s been slapped. Bucky sighs. “Just…stop it. I don’t…I’m not worried about him, okay? I don’t think he’s going to hurt you.”

          “You’re not worried?” Steve repeats; he sounds numb.

          “No. Honestly, I’m not! He’s been here this long, right? And nothing bad’s happened to you, or to the team. Maybe he really is just trying to be helpful.”

          “He’s part of you,” Steve says gently. He touches his fingers to Bucky’s chest, and it feels reverent. Bucky fights the urge to shake it away.

          “No he’s not,” says Bucky shortly. He’s not done, but he steps back under the spray anyway to rinse. When he’s clean of suds, he pulls the curtain back and steps out. “But he’s here to stay.”

          “You don’t have to give _up_. This isn’t the end.”

          “I will _never_ be comfortable not having my own head to myself. Not after everything.” Bucky looks him over, how sad a picture he makes under the pulsing shower spray, wet hair plastered to his forehead and a miserable expression on his face. Captain America, a drowned kitten left out to be stray. “Finish showering. I’m going for a run.”

          “Bucky—”

          But he ignores the names called after him. He finds sweatpants and a spare shirt in Steve’s drawers, and pulls on the only shoes he has. As soon as he’s out the front door, he’s running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chap title from [glory and gore by lorde](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOks2HArHf0)!
> 
>  
> 
> [come hmu @ freyias on tumblr!](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/149625776630)
> 
>  
> 
> xoxo


	5. slithered here from eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something absolutely terrible about fighting with Steve. Bucky feels like half of him is under attack from the other side, an irreconcilable, violent tussle that squeezes him right in his chest. It’s not right; it’s not natural. Him and Steve were made to fight together, not turn on each other like animals. It’s additionally strange with how Bucky already feels torn in two all the time; but for just now, the cleaved parts of him become one, both driven to agreement by the same goal: _Find peace with Steve._
> 
> The fight lasts for three days.

**BUCKY**

 

 

          There’s something absolutely terrible about fighting with Steve. Bucky feels like half of him is under attack from the other side, an irreconcilable, violent tussle that squeezes him right in his chest. It’s not right; it’s not natural. Him and Steve were made to fight together, not turn on each other like animals. It’s additionally strange with how Bucky already feels torn in two all the time; but for just now, the cleaved parts of him become one, both driven to agreement by the same goal: _Find peace with Steve_.

          The fight lasts for three days. Three days of slammed doors in the morning; of taking their halves of breakfast into separate rooms; of Bucky leaving the apartment for hours at a time at night, and refusing to come back until the early sunlight touches the corners of the world, knowing it makes Steve worry unnecessarily. He comes back on day three to find the apartment empty and a neatly untouched new cell phone on the counter—but when Bucky finally turns it on and gets it set up, what he considered a reconciliatory gesture turns out to just be a way for Natasha and Sam to call him repetitively in turns, telling him to come pick his boyfriend up from their couch where he’s steadily eating them out of house and home. Bucky shuts the phone back off before nightfall, their pleas unanswered and unsolved.

          And then, on the fourth morning of their miserable silence, Bucky wakes up alone in their bed. It’s not uncommon, recently, but he still grumbles inconsolably while he puts on his sweats (Steve’s sweatpants, technically, but which Bucky has all but written his name on by this point) and pads out into the hall. There’s a delicious smell coming from the kitchen, which despite the irritation in his chest and head, his feet follows automatically.

          Steve looks up when Bucky comes in. He says, “Pancakes alright, James?”

          Bucky puts his hands down on the counter with force. Steve jumps and looks up at him with wide eyes.

          “Alright.” It comes out hard and unhappy, and more than a little grumpy if he’s being honest with himself (he rarely is). His shoulders are hunched a little, and he knows he’s letting his distaste of the morning color his mood now, but he’s not awake enough to fight it off just yet. “That’s enough.”

          “That wasn’t on purpose, I swear,” Steve says, dangerously waving around the spatula he’s holding as he makes to cross his heart. Grease drips off the end of it and splats on the floor, where they both jump away from the hot droplet. “Sorry, you just looked…annoyed.”

          “I’m always annoyed.” Bucky stands up straighter and crosses his arms over his chest. “Sorry I’m not all charm and smiles like I was back when we were kids. Things change.”

          “It was an accident,” Steve hurriedly says again, holding both hands up in the air. “I’m sorry.”

          “It’s not…Jesus Christ.” Bucky closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. When he speaks again, he tries to make it come out more patient, more measured. “I’m just not…We are _two different people_ , Steve. I don’t like being mistaken for him any more like you like being mistaken for, I don’t know—”

          “Thor?” Steve offers. He shrugs. “It’s just, people usually get mistaken for _me_. Occupational hazard of being an international superhero.”

          Bucky snorts. “I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about, but whatever. Yes. Sure, it’s like that. We’re just…not the same guy, and I get your confusion, I really do. But we’ve known each other our _whole lives_ , Steve.”

          “I’m not used to parsing you apart,” Steve admits. “I’m used to you coming so much more easily to me.”

          Bucky tips his head in one direction. That’s fair, too. He’s not sure he would know what to do if a clone of Steve showed up one day and demand that Bucky know the difference just by the cadence of their speech and the ticks in their mannerisms.

          “Maybe I’m being unfair,” he allows. Then he shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter.”

          “That’s how you feel,” Steve says, sounding cautious, like any one wrong word could spur them into another three-day mutual silent treatment. This morning is the most they’ve talked in days; it’s like taking a sudden gulp of fresh air without knowing beforehand that he’d been breathing in fumes.

          “It is,” says Bucky.

          For a moment, they just blink back and forth at one another. They haven’t reached any kind of agreement; there’s nowhere to go from here. Then Bucky sits down at the table, and Steve flips their pancakes onto a plate and sits down across from him, and they begin talking about stupid things that happened to them on their days apart. Bucky is well aware that it’s not solved, just simmering there beneath the surface—but he’s willing to ignore it to have this back to him, for now. Just this one breakfast back with Steve.

          “So, you got any plans today?” Steve asks as they’re cleaning up together, gathering everything to throw into the dishwasher. It’s a strange dance to do together in the limited space of the kitchen, but Bucky’s used to it from the months they’ve been reconnected.

          Bucky looks away, scratching idly at the side of his jaw.

          “I was thinking I might go see Sam later,” he says. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him and meets them, reluctantly. “He’s been texting me nonstop ever since you gave him my new number. For the record, most of them were about you all but moving into his living room for good. Know anything about that?”

          At this, Steve gets mysteriously busy putting away his plates and does not answer.

          “It’s good that you’re expanding your circle of people to talk to,” says Steve. “Sam’s a good guy. You should have more things to do than sit around the apartment all day, waiting for it to get dark so you can go smoke with the working girls by the lake. Yes, I know about that.”

          “Kat’s friends are nice,” Bucky protests, “and I do more than wait around. I went to Poland like, a week ago.”

          Steve shakes his head. “Missions don’t count. But speaking of, SHIELD wanted me to ask you to come in for another briefing.”

          “More tests?” He doesn’t exactly love the sound of that.

          “No, I think they want to brief you. They’re thinking about bringing you in on more calls instead of just having you do surveillance on low-level jobs. Your skillset is too important.”

          Bucky scowls. “Will I still have my guard?”

          Steve shrugs. “Hey, it’s a good start.”

          Bucky rolls his eyes. He’s a lot of things, but patient is not anywhere near the top of that list.

          “I’m sick of just sitting around,” he complains.

          “You were the one who did that to yourself,” Steve reminds him. “I asked you to come out a hundred times—”

          “Hey, that was a warranted quarantine!” Bucky says. “I _just_ got cleared by SHIELD. I’m still not sure if I’m actually a risk or not. Not just to national security, but to the public too! I can’t trust my own mind.”

          “Neither side of you would hurt—”

          “I _have_ ,” Bucky interrupts him flatly. He spreads his hands out for Steve to see, as though the bloodshed he’s done might stain his palms for all to see. They’re clean, but they’re still the calloused, rough hands of somebody who’s seen and done too much. They prove his point well enough on their own. “And he has, too. More than me, even.”

          Steve doesn’t say anything.

          “We don’t know what his allegiances are, or why he swapped sides. I don’t know if he agrees that we’re on the right side. He’s just loyal to _you_. That’s not grounds for unleashing him on the public.”

          “You’re not a weapon,” Steve snaps.

          “I was,” Bucky argues. “For way too long. And there’s no fucking—there’s no _fixing_ me. I’ll never be one or the other. Not ever.”

          Steve sighs, but Bucky can see his jaw working. He breathes deeply a couple of times, his eyes shutting.

          “Can we have _one_ morning?” he asks tightly.

          For some reason, his ability to calm himself angers Bucky beyond words. He just wants to fight it out and have it be done; he can’t live in the strange limbo of the past few days anymore. Similarly, though, he can’t do anything if Steve isn’t willing to meet him in the middle.

          “Have as many as you’d like,” Bucky snaps. The dishes are mostly put away by now anyway; he spins around and storms out of the room, leaving the rest of it to Steve.

          He finds his phone on the bedside table in their room, shut off and forgotten, a habit he has yet to pick up. Still, Sam texts him back pretty quickly when Bucky asks to come over, and he’s in and out in under ten minutes. He just has to throw on some jeans and a pair of shoes, and he ignores the fact that he’s barely done more than roll out of bed and he’s already ready to leave the house, no preparations or precautions whatsoever. He doesn’t know when he got so comfortable, but the idea is strangely unnerving, somehow. He opens the bedside drawer and looks at his weapons for a long time before he ultimately resists the urge to take a pocket knife just in case. He slams the drawer shut.

          Sam is the only other member of the unofficially-official Avengers, aside from Clint and his farm (Bucky is still pretty sure he’s missing pieces of that story), that opted not to live in the Tower with everybody else. Most chose it just for convenience’s sake, in and out as they constantly are, and Bucky doesn’t know if Sam doesn’t feel welcome there or just prefers his own space, but he lives a couple of blocks over, only a fifteen minute walk away. Bucky’s been there before—he has to do _something_ with his nights when he isn’t dropping in on Kat and her friends, and vetting Steve’s friends was as good a use of his time as anything else. Not that they know about that, really.

          Sam’s clearly decided to take the day in; if anything, Bucky’s too dressed up for the occasion. Sam lets him in, hands him a beer, and tells him there’s some game on the TV in the living room. It all sounds pretty good to him.

          “So, who are we today?” Sam asks when Bucky steps inside, and Bucky laughs out loud, a little bit startled.

          “Bucky,” he confirms with a little nod of his head. Sam just nods with a serious look on his face.

          “Well, Bucky—” He points into another room around the corner. “The game’s not gonna watch itself, is it?”

          Bucky grins.

          “Who knows,” he says. “The future is full of shit I never even knew I missed.”

          Just as he pretty much expected, Sam’s easy company. At some point, about halfway through the game, a little dog comes bounding into the room and Sam jumps up like it’s going to attack even though it’s about a foot long. Bucky watches him in amusement until Sam turns a sad face on him and he realizes.

          “Oh,” he says, sitting up a little straighter. “It’s fine, I’m not…uh, it’s okay.”

          “Do you like dogs?” Sam asks cautiously.

          Bucky tilts his head thoughtfully. “I used to,” he says with a little shrug.

          Sam seems to take that for what it is—namely, all Bucky can give. He does step out of the way and give the dog room to jump up onto the couch, where it begins licking excitedly at Bucky’s face. Caught off guard, he laughs. The tag dangling from its collar reads “Morrigan,” and Bucky pats her head with tentative, flesh fingers.

          “Morrigan?” he asks, looking up at Sam.

          Sam shrugs. “Goddess of birds. I call her Mo.”

          Bucky grins, first at Sam, and then at the dog after awhile. He says thoughtfully, “Mo.”

          After a minute or two of paying the dog attention, Sam sits back down on the couch with him and Mo settles between them. They go back to watching the game together, albeit with their numbers now three instead of two; Bucky finds he doesn’t mind.

          During one of the commercial breaks, Sam goes into the kitchen to find more beer, and Bucky gets up after brandishing a finger at Mo and asking her to stay put for a second. He doesn’t interrupt Sam, though he follows him; instead he just leans against the doorframe leading into the kitchen and stays there, arms crossed and eyes watchful. Neither of them say anything for a prolonged minute.

          “If you’re going to ask, you might as well do it now,” Sam says eventually.

          “I know you work with the VA, but I’m not here for therapy,” Bucky says flatly.

          Sam turns around slowly. He puts the two bottles in his hands down on the island counter in front of him. “Well, I’m guessing you’re not here to ask what he said about you like two fourth grade boys passing notes in class.”

          Bucky inclines his head towards him. Sam sighs.

          “Well, ask me then,” he says. He sounds resigned.

          Bucky shakes his head. Dropping his arms, he steps a little further into the room. Sam is watching him carefully, but he doesn’t seem frightened or worried, both of which Bucky expected to read on his face.

          “You asked me who I was today,” Bucky says bluntly.

          Sam regards him objectively. “I did,” he agrees cautiously.

          “Steve doesn’t do that,” Bucky says. “Steve thinks I’m always me.”

          Sam just looks at him some more. “I’ve seen a lot of things, man. If that was true, I don’t think you’d use two names.”

          “I can’t be fixed,” Bucky tells him.

          Sam sighs again. He leans back against the counter and drags a hand over the side of his face.

          “I’m not arguing with you,” he says, “and like you said, I’m not playing messenger with you two. It’s up to him to see the light. So to speak.”

          Bucky snorts. “We’re fighting,” he says, “again.”

          “I know one thing,” Sam says. He picks up the beer again, and when he comes closer, he passes one to Bucky and then brushes by. He does look over his shoulder, though, to finish his thought: “You can’t want him to see your side of things and then get mad that he won’t read your mind.”

          “He won’t _listen_ ,” Bucky insists, but Sam’s already back on the couch, murmuring coos to Mo and paying more attention to the game than he is to Bucky, and Bucky sighs and sits down too. Sam clinks their bottles together and takes a very long drink.

 

          Bucky doesn’t leave Sam’s until near dinnertime. Even though he just traded a day in one apartment for a day in another, it feels good to have stretched his legs and seen more of the outside world than just Steve and whatever stories he has that day, however much Bucky loves him. He calls for Steve to buzz him inside the building and takes the long elevator ride up (he would think, given the upscale quality of the apartment, the ride might be faster—but he’s sorely disappointed). He takes a moment and several deep breaths before he enters the apartment, just staring at the door blankly and gathering his considerable strength, but it’s with a redesigned worldview that he walks inside the unlocked door and goes straight towards the couch, where Steve is lounging and drawing something on his sketchpad.

          For a second, Bucky just stands there beside him. Steve doesn’t look at him. Bucky looks at Steve plenty. With a great sigh, he throws himself down on the couch beside him.

          For Steve to meet him in the middle, he guesses, he has to budge more than a couple of inches himself.

          “I’ve been through a whole hell of a lot, Steve,” Bucky says.

          Steve looks up from his sketchpad. He doesn’t put it down, but it’s something to have his eyes on him after all these long days, after all. Steve, for all that Bucky can usually never get him to shut up, has nothing to say but whatever he wants to convey with his slow, unwavering gaze. Bucky decides that he has to be the one to go on, and he does so, carefully.

          “I know that you want me to be whoever I used to be,” he says slowly, “but neither of us are that man anymore. It’s not fair of you to want that from me—you aren’t, either.”

          “I don’t expect—” Steve starts, but Bucky holds up a hand and asks to finish. When Steve falls silent, Bucky rests his hand on Steve’s thigh instead and squeezes it—letting him know that he isn’t upset.

          “Here’s the thing, Steve. Me and James—we’re not two halves of the same person. At all. We’re just two separate people who got stuck in a shit deal, and we have to share space. Like you and me, except with us it’s headspace instead of a fucking bathroom. Maybe we stemmed from the same place—that place that HYDRA kept me in—but as soon as he broke off, or was created or whatever the fuck it was, we became two _different_ people. And we’ve had seventy years to grow apart.

          “But even when I’m me, I won’t ever be that kid I was in Brooklyn anymore. I talked big game, but turns out I didn’t know _shit_ about the world. I’ve been through a whole hell of a lot of wars, Steve. Even when I wasn’t me some of the time, that—all that still happened to my body. I guess,”—he laughs mirthlessly—“I guess me and James get to share the mental trauma even when we weren’t there for the trigger.”

          Steve puts his hand over Bucky’s on his leg and squeezes down hard. Bucky didn’t realize his voice was wavering until Steve brought attention to it with his comfort, but now Bucky realizes the lump hanging heavy in his throat. He swallows around it best he can.

          “I just want you to be happy,” Steve says, and shit, but Bucky just about swallows his tongue. He doesn’t know how Steve can make even platitudes sound sincere, but he can; something about the cliché doesn’t sound so tawdry coming out of Steve’s mouth, but instead like it was something that Steve himself came up with first and the rest of the world didn’t know it was failing to give him credit for the phrase for all of history. If Bucky was going to believe anyone when they said that to him, it would be Steve—and it is.

          “I am. With you,” he says, “but you can’t will me back into a past life because it’s too hard to get to a good place today.”

          Steve’s brow creases. “You’re not in a good place?”

          Bucky flips his palm to meet Steve’s and squeezes his hand, then lets go and touches his leg again.

          “I’m getting there,” he says.

          Steve looks at him for a long moment. Then he sighs.

          “I don’t…understand,” Steve says after a long moment. Bucky watches the way he dips his head while he talks, the way he isn’t looking his way—not like he can’t, but just like he’s trying to get his bearings, trying to measure his words.

          Bucky sighs. “I don’t understand it either,” he says, “not all the way anyway. That doesn’t make it any less true.”

          “I don’t know how to help you,” Steve admits, and now he turns imploring eyes on him. Bucky would do just about anything to get Steve to stop looking like that, lost and hopeless and with his eyes too big, desperately seeking for some way out of whatever he’s fighting. Steve wants to put fists to everything, but some things just don’t work that way.

          “You can’t punch your way out of this one,” Bucky laughs. He rubs Steve’s leg affectionately. “Look, nobody knows what’s going on better than me—and _I_ barely understand what’s going on. And it’s _my head_. So you just have to…I don’t know. Listen, I guess.”

          “And work it out with you,” Steve says. Somehow, it sounds like a promise more than it sounds like he’s just figuring it out now. “Of course, any time. I mean—every time.”

          “That means _every time_ ,” Bucky says. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you get to argue about it. Okay?”

          “Whatever you want, I swear. We’ll talk it all through first, and you—you can tell me where I’m going wrong. I just…I want to work this out with you. More than anything else.”

          “I know,” Bucky says, and he does.

          When Steve puts his hand on Bucky’s arm and pulls him towards him, Bucky falls into him like deadweight and wraps his arms around Steve until he knows the pressure is unwarranted—but he also knows that it doesn’t matter to either of them just now. The most important thing is that he has Steve in his arms, right this very second. Steve hugs him back like he’s never agreed more.

          “Is it okay then?” Steve asks, when they pull away from each other just slightly. Bucky doesn’t unwrap his arm from its loose grip around Steve’s waist, but with his other he puts a light hand high on Steve’s arm. “You’re…Bucky now, right? And is that…I mean, is that okay for me to ask?”

          Bucky swallows. Instinctively, that same nauseous bile as this morning rises up in him that Steve doesn’t just _know_ —but he combats it almost as fast as it comes, reminding himself that that’s not fair to Steve any more than Steve refusing to comply would be to him. Slowly, Bucky nods.

          “Whatever you need,” he says.

          When he smiles, it isn’t quite perfect, but Steve gives a breathless laugh anyway and sweeps some strands of hair away from Bucky’s face. Even though he knows it’s coming, his kiss still seems unexpected and sweet.

          “Til the end of the line,” Bucky breathes.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          He wakes up in Steve’s bed for the first time in a couple of days. It was a weird kind of purgatory, he thought, knowing that Bucky was so mad at Steve over the whole dinner debacle that he was willing to sleep on the couch night after night. James felt a strangely personal obligation to fall asleep there, too, even though it was less comfortable and there was no Steve in it with him, so that Bucky wouldn’t have to wake up next to Steve during their fighting and find that his own body had betrayed him while somebody else was in control of the reigns. James knows a lot about not having control; whatever his discomfort, he let Bucky have his few days and hoped that they would work it out fast.

          Now, back safely where he likes to be, he rolls over and fits himself snugly against Steve’s side. Steve mumbles something incoherent in his sleep while James wraps his metal arm around Steve’s waist. Even for the lack of skin-on-skin contact, his heat and pressure detectors nevertheless bring up enough of a facsimile that James feels warm and happy anyway, tucked near him like that while Steve sleeps and he himself is just waking up.

          He drifts in and out again as the minutes pass with him just lying there. He doesn’t really realize that he’s doing it, but after awhile he notices that he doesn’t remember just exactly when Steve started running his hand through James’s hair—he only knows that it feels nice. He mumbles something, rubs his face against Steve’s chest. Steve’s gentle laughter greets him back.

          “What was that?”

          James hides his face more for a second, then lifts his mouth just enough to say, “Good morning.”

          Steve says, “Mmm, it is,” and hugs him a little closer. James flops one of his legs over Steve’s beneath the covers.

          They fall back into comfort together, the kind that only comes in the distant rays of the early morning when the world might still be a dream, but each holds the knowledge that the other isn’t going to get up as soon as they wake. They can just lay there together, wrapped up in each other, and feel their tandem breathing with the relief and security that the other is feeling exactly the same amount of affection and serenity and ease.

          James isn’t sure whether he drops off again or not, but he does know a few things: the contrast of Steve’s bare waist on his metal hand; the warm aliveness of his chest against James’s cheek; the idea that maybe Bucky got the night all to himself, but this morning and this moment are all James’s for the taking. For a second, it doesn’t feel like he has to share. Maybe he doesn’t have Steve all to himself all of the time, but this memory is just between the two of them—forever.

          It takes a long time for the morning to coax either of them out of bed. Eventually, James becomes aware of the hour; Steve could have, and sometimes would have, been on two or three runs by now and still made it home for breakfast. They aren’t sleeping late, but it’s still a late start. James could probably stay another hour in bed at least, but he knows that Steve gets restless, so around ten he rolls off the mattress and onto his feet.

          He looks over; Steve, for all that he complains when he isn’t up in a timely fashion, is just snuffling himself back awake. James tilts his head judgmentally at him; Steve blinks blearily back.

          “Where are you going?” Steve mumbles. He makes an aborted gesture towards James, like he’s attempting to grab something. It falls very short, and despite the sudden rush of endearment filling him, James just snorts at the picture he makes all spread out and mussed up in their bed.

          “Let’s get breakfast,” James says.

          He freezes as soon as he says it. Steve wakes up more in an instant, not sitting up but clearly attentive in the way his eyes open and his shoulders tense up. James can see it, how he’s daring himself not to hope, and in that he finds the grounding security of certainty overwhelm him.

          “Yeah?” says Steve.

          James swallows. He nods, jerkily. “Yeah,” he says.

          They don’t go immediately. Steve still makes feeble attempts to get a good grip on James and pull him back into bed, and the few times he succeeds, James laughs while they wrestle. No one gets hurt; James gets kissed more times that morning than all the times in the past half a week combined; and in the end they shove each other out of bed and while they get dressed, they grin over their shoulders with their backs to each other like schoolchildren sharing a joke, pulling on one another’s clothes with no regard to what belongs to whom.

          Steve wraps his arm around James’s shoulder when they finally manage to wander out of the bedroom around ten-thirty, and James ducks his head into the curve of his neck for half a second, smiling himself silly.

          “We don’t have to,” Steve says at the door, where they stop to pull on their shoes.

          James throws him a withering glance. Steve pauses in tying his laces to hold up his hands.

          “Alright, alright. No arguing once you’ve made up your mind—got it.”

          James snorts. “When,” he demands in a dead tone, “have you _ever_ managed to not argue until you were blue in the goddamn face?”

          Steve looks at him for a second and then busts out laughing.

          “You learn fast,” is all he says, and James shakes his head while he finishes doing up his shoes (the latest loss in the slowly-receding list of things that Steve swears he’s going to get for him and which James staunchly refuses to let him buy).

          James watches how Steve leaves his apartment in case he ever decides to use the front door; it was nearly instinctive to turn for the window in the first place before he remembered to follow Steve out into the hall. Now, he sees the careful way he turns the key in the lock, and how he checks the handle to make sure it’s really pulled closed. It’s a strange ritual, for James; it’s both more than the average person would do, and less than Steve should be inclined to do with all the sabotage and betrayal in his past.

          “Ready to go?” Steve asks. James nods back.

          By the time they actually settle on a diner to go to, get inside, and get seated, it’s already half past eleven and the servers bring them out lunch menus instead. James stares blankly down at the menu when he first gets it, flipping through to check out all the different items first before simply giving up and blinking down at it. Steve is whistling lowly, seemingly engrossed in his own reading of their choices for lunch, and he doesn’t notice the several times that James glances up at him. At last, though, he seems to decide on something to eat; and then he closes his menu, puts it down on the table, and folds his hands together on the table.

          “Ready to order?” he asks, leaning across slightly to better communicate over the semi-noisy chatter of other happy midday diners.

          James just looks at him for a long time. Eventually the crease of Steve’s brow comes out in full force, and he leans back again.

          “What’s wrong?” he says flatly.

          James looks at him some more. At last, he says in a grumble, “I don’t understand what any of this shit means.”

          Steve’s concern turns somewhat more towards confusion; he glances down at his own menu again like it might have transformed into gibberish in the absence of his attention, then at James’s like they might have entirely different copies. Noticing his rapid nosedive in comprehension, James does his best to supply his own distress.

          “What the hell is a Minnie’s Regular Cobweb Platter?” he demands. “I mean, they listed out descriptions, sure—but why not just go for a regular cheeseburger or bacon or whatever the fuck? Why did they make these so complicated?”

          Steve, to James’s immense consternation, is laughing. As James’s glare deepens, his hysteria only seems to mount. He manages, at length, to get himself under control enough to lean over and point at something else on the menu.

          “It’s always been this complicated,” Steve assures him. There’s a very small hint of apology in his voice that is nowhere even close to comforting. “How often did you go to restaurants, James? Ever?”

          James pulls a face, trying to remember.

          “A few, over the years,” he says at last. “Mainly bars or room service, and that’s all very straightforward. HYDRA never…it was all very plain at base.”

          Steve is still shaking his head, looking amused.

          “What?” James demands. “What?”

          Steve grins. “You can speak a hundred different languages, but you can’t order off a New York diner menu,” he says, looking way too pleased.

          James kicks at him under the table. “Shut up,” he grumbles. Steve laughs so hard he clutches his own chest in the process, forcing a small smile out of James in the end.

          James winds up just settling on a plain salad, and he doesn’t look the waiter in the eye while he grumbles his order way too quietly. Steve is cheerful, though, asking for something way too complicated that he adds about a thousand caveats to, asking for more onions and less pepperjack and so many more stipulations that James stops listening because he doesn’t understand the half of it. After the waiter walks away with the menus, though, he becomes aware that there are eyes on him and looks back over at Steve.

          “What?” he asks.

          Steve offers a smile again, smaller than before. He gently squeezes his ankle past James’s underneath the table, carelessly and casually tangling their legs. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, he knows—nobody is likely to even notice—but it makes James’s heart warm, again. They look at each other for a long time.

          “I know you’re wondering,” says Steve.

          James says, “How did I end up back in the bed?”

          Steve sighs.

          “Bucky and I had a very long talk,” he begins. “I just wanted us to…you know, go back to normal. I…I knew that you were two different parts of a whole, but I guess I just didn’t see how… _different_ you were. You may have started in the same place—wherever you branched off from his mind, if it was a coping mechanism or something else, I don’t know—but you grew up in such different directions.

          “And even after I came to terms with that, I just…I don’t know, I wanted him to be _him_ when he was him. Shit, I don’t…I don’t even know if that makes _sense_. I knew all the baggage you were coming in with, James, but he’s a different story entirely. We grew up together. I’ve known him since the day before forever. And I guess I just wanted us to be able to go back to that, like nothing had ever happened.”

          “I’m not just some projected conglomeration of all his bad experiences,” James says, trying not to feel too stung. “I don’t get all the bad shit and he gets to skip back to his childhood.”

          “I know that!” Steve says quickly. “It’s not that I thought you were all the trauma and he was everything else. I just thought that maybe…I don’t know, that maybe he was still somebody I used to know. But he’s not. We’re both different people than we were since the War, and I just had to come to terms with that.”

          “We won’t ever be the same head,” James says, shaking his now. “We’re two entirely different people.”

          Steve reaches across the table. When he wraps his hands around James’s fists, he lets him do it.

          “I know that now,” he says urgently. “And I’m sorry that I took so long to figure out how to separate you. It wasn’t fair…but I want to try now.”

          “To make it up to me?”

          Steve tips his head slightly. “That,” he says lightly, “but also…I just want to try to learn how to…empathize with your whole situation. All I’m asking is that you’re patient with me.”

          James unclenches his fists. When he slides them out of Steve’s grip, he doesn’t immediately let go; instead he holds one of Steve’s hands more firmly and squeezes it once. After, when they let go, he feels Steve’s knuckles brush his knee underneath the table and he holds Steve’s hand there instead, out of sight, but strong.

          “Of course,” James says. “Whatever you need.”

          Their food comes then, while they’re too busy gazing raptly at each other with stars and space in their eyes to notice the waiter coming over until it’s too late to play it off. Steve seems unperturbed though, digging into his strange-named mess while James samples bites of his salad and figures out what he does and doesn’t like. Even when he was traveling all the time for missions and whatnot, he never got the opportunity to try food this way. It was always about nutrition, not taste; he picked whatever would give him the biggest serving with the highest number of calories and went with that. He ate for energy, not pleasure.

          It’s fun now though, sitting with Steve at a diner in the middle of the day, figuring out what parts of a cobb salad he does and doesn’t like. The sunlight is bright through the window that they’re seated against and Steve’s legs are solid all twisted up with his and James feels that same sense of calmness he gets more and more these days creeping up over him again. It’s a feeling, he thinks, that he could get used to.

          “I guess all that’s left now is to figure out what to do about us,” Steve says.

          James, trying to cut through the chicken strips on his plate to mix them in more cohesively with the greens, looks up. His brow furrows.

          “About us?” he echoes. “What do you mean?”

          Steve grins. “I’m not looking to slap a label on us, jeez. Get that look off your face. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about, with everything. You know, I’m seeing you, but I’m also seeing Bucky. Except you’re definitely not seeing each other, but you’re also not the same person…”

          James’s eyebrows knit closer together. “That is confusing.”

          Steve jabs his fork through one of the eggs that James scraped off to the side of his plate and sticks it in his mouth.

          “Bucky said something last night before we went to sleep,” he says. “Not sure how I feel about it, though.”

          When he doesn’t immediately elaborate, James waves his fork in Steve’s direction.

          “Go on,” he says calmly.

          He doesn’t want to fight again; he doesn’t even want to think about the possibility of having another few days like the ones he just had, confused and left in the dark about why he was being denied all the things that he was, anyway. God, he’s going to be _so_ mad at Bucky if he did something to mess things up for him, so soon after everything else had been sorted through.

          But Steve just makes a face like he’s suddenly tasted a disproportionately heavy amount of lemons with his lunch and he says, “After we…you know, slept together last night…he made this crack about us—I mean, me and him and you—having a threesome together.”

          There’s a long beat of silence. Steve is looking at him with his head ducked a little down. James is just staring back blankly. And then—and he isn’t quite sure where it originated before it burst from his mouth—he erupts into wild, raucous laughter. James laughs so long that his stomach starts to hurt; he clutches at it feebly, although it does nothing to soothe the burn inside. Steve is red in the face now, watching him across the table, but James can’t find it in him to stop. He’s starting to tear up a little, actually, but he just can’t stop _laughing_.

          “Alright,” Steve says eventually, a little intensely. “ _Alright_.”

          “Oh, my lord,” James says, only regaining a modicum of his previous control over himself. “ _Damn_.”

          “There _is_ a certain polyamorous twist on this whole situation,” Steve admits, his brow furrowed a little bit.

          James cocks his head. “Poly-whaterous?”

          Steve grins, his red face turning more of a pinkish shade instead.

          “It means we’re not monogamous,” he says. “Like we’re still in a closed relationship, there’s just more than two of us involved.”

          James inclines his head towards Steve slightly. “He’s not wrong.”

          “It’s weird to think about, though,” Steve points out.

          James shrugs. “He’s not wrong,” he says again. “I guess I don’t think of it like that. Me and you, and you and him, are like two separate things. But I guess…it _is_ kind of like a threeway.”

          “Polyamory,” Steve says at once, and then, more decisively, “You’re both impossible.”

          The scarlet color has receded almost entirely from his cheeks, but there’s still just this little twinge to his expression—and to the malicious way he stabs next at his lunch—that indicates that he thinks they’re not _impossible_ so much as _incorrigible_. The thought makes James grin.

          “Hey,” he says thoughtfully, going back to his food himself, “what’s the book about making a proper lady out of an impossible girl?”

          Steve thinks on it a moment, then asks, “The Taming of the Shrew?” with this adorable little pinch to his expression.

          “That’s the one.”

          “That’s a play. Why do you ask?”

          James shrugs. “Does he do it, in the end? Tame her?”

          “I guess. I think it’s supposed to be ironic, though. Like, nowhere in real life would that actually happen, you know? And it’s supposed to come off as kind of messed up to even think about doing that to another person. Why?”

          James nods thoughtfully but does not answer him. After awhile, Steve stops looking at him expectantly for an reply and goes back to eating too, albeit while shooting a couple of confused glances across the table at him every now and again.

          James has so many things he didn’t before, and he doesn’t know what to do with all of them. Not a home, or freedom to go where he likes, or Steve’s affection, or cobb salads. He likes the thought of it, though: He can’t be tamed. Not anymore. And Steve would never want him to be.

          “Let’s get breakfast for dinner later,” James suggests after awhile.

          Steve points his fork at him threateningly. “Finish one disaster of a meal before you go looking for another,” he says.

          “ _I_ didn’t hassle the waiters about drinks specials for twenty minutes.”

          “And _I_ didn’t butcher the pronunciation of half the things in my salad while the waiter tried to keep up and explain what everything was, but I didn’t think to mention it.”

          “Oh, god,” James groaned. “Do we have to leave a big tip?”

          Steve glances at James’s metal arm and cocks his head.

          “He’s probably more scared you’ll crush him with a pinky finger if he messes up,” Steve says, “but let’s do it anyway, just to be nice.”

 

          They don’t go home immediately, once they’re all done at the diner; instead, Steve suggests a walk while the day is nice. James thinks that he can handle a couple of more hours outside today and agrees.

          They don’t have a particular destination in mind, wandering aimlessly in and out of the streets instead. Steve either talks about the different places they’re passing or waves to people in their windows that he must know now, in this neighborhood where they’re made their home. Sometimes the conversation lulls, and James watches idly as Steve whistles a random tune with his hands in his pockets as they stroll. James thinks he could picture it, maybe: Steve in the olden days, having the same day that they are today, young and happy and maybe a little skinnier and a hell of a lot shorter, if the pictures are to be believed. He doesn’t know how Steve fits into two centuries at once, but he does so effortlessly. He’s got more superpowers than SHIELD even knows about—even if most of them are just things like making James laugh and looking beautiful in the sun and making a home out of wherever he wanders.

          Eventually they come up to a little lake situated in between a swath of trees. Steve takes off his shoes and sits down on the rocks that lead down into the water, folding his feet underneath him to keep them dry. James sticks his own in the lake and looks out over the little picture of peace they’ve found here.

          “You know, it’s hard to find water out in the city,” Steve says mildly beside him. James looks over at him and finds that he’s rolled his sleeves up and is sitting with his face tilted towards the sun. “But if you know where to look, you can find some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.”

          James hums his agreement instead of vocalizing it, but by Steve’s little nods he seems to get the message. After awhile James reaches over and threads his fingers through Steve’s, who accommodates him in loose, lazy gestures. Once their hands are twined, Steve rubs his thumb over James’s in soothing little motions, random and stilted but gentle, too.

          “I want this all to work out,” James says, speaking more to the great blue water than to Steve or anyone else.

          Steve sighs. It doesn’t sound exasperated, but it’s full of something. James figures he has a long time ahead of him to find out what.

          “Whatever we have to do,” Steve agrees.

          They don’t say any more about. In fact, they don’t say much of anything at all. James leans his head back and just breathes, soaking in the sunlight; beside him, Steve does the same. The lake is quiet, the street too far behind them for the bustle of the city to reach them here. For a long time, it’s just James and Steve and their future, stretching out before them like so much water lapping calmly at the shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow no tragic content warning this time! amazing!
> 
> chapter title from [from eden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI0wUoCLnLk) by hozier
> 
> still on tumblr @ [freyias](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/150263078605)!
> 
> xoxox


	6. shooting stars above you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You should have good things too,” Steve says quietly.
> 
> For a long moment, Bucky has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Even though Steve is looking at him like he’s just revealed some deep and irreversibly life-changing truth about him, Bucky just sits and stares back at his earnestly open eyes for a long time. It’s a staring contest he’s pretty sure he’s going to lose, and that’s even with all the confusion settled in his chest.
> 
> At last, he ventures to break the silence.
> 
> “…What?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO i know i'm technically late. shit went down - my computer broke (with all my files on it!), i fractured my wrist, i had midterms...all in all, not ideal for writing when i was transferring files & letting my wrist heal! anyway, i figured if i got the next TWO chapters done by the second time i was supposed to update, i would technically be on schedule in the grand scheme of things. so without further ado, here's the last chapter and the epilogue :)
> 
> cw: light almost-panic attack, but he calms down.

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          Steve comes out of their bedroom and into the kitchen while James is making breakfast. It’s more of an early lunch really, since they were up so late last night and James didn’t even wake up until nine-thirty, two full hours before Steve is wandering out now; but he’s frying french toast and not even wearing a shirt, just sweatpants that are hanging low on his hips, so he figures it’s breakfast if he says it is.

          Steve touches his hip lightly and brushes a kiss against his cheek.

          “Morning,” he says, voice thick with sleep. His hair is mussed; his eyes are still half-closed.

          “It is,” James says.

          Steve makes a face, too sleepy for even a proper eye roll. He wanders away and pads over to the fridge instead and starts digging around. When he pulls out the juice, he drinks a couple of gulps straight from the carton, then wipes his wrist across his mouth and puts the carton back.

          “Who are we today, hmm?” Steve asks, brushing by again. His gaze catches on James’s for just a second longer than a mild glance would warrant.

          James suppresses a grin into his shoulder as he looks back at Steve, then quickly shifts his gaze back to his food.

          “James,” he says. Even now, the name sounds strange coming from his own tongue—even though it’s been months and months since he’s named himself now—and it comes out as more of a grunt.

          Steve reappears behind him and slips his arms around James’s waist. Automatically, James leans back into the warm comfort of his chest and grins again as Steve presses his face close, their cheeks brushing, Steve nosing at the side of James’s face.

          “James,” Steve says, and from him it sounds more like a demur thing than something that warrants shame or hiding. James hums softly and settles more of his weight against the solid body behind him.

          Steve seems to have exhausted his morning chatter and simply stays there, unmoving, while James finishes up with breakfast. He doesn’t help or hinder, merely keeps James folded up in his arms and occasionally breathes a tune or hums by his ear, rocking them gently from side to side. It’s easy to fall into a kind of daydream there, the rhythm and the warmth of the morning seeping into James’s skin.

          By the time their breakfast is done, James is as loose and sleepy again as he felt when he first woke up. The radio on one of the living room shelves—sometimes Steve can’t seem to let go of the past entirely—pumps out something dreamy while a boy croons about suburbia, and James feels like he relates to it even though he’s never had a single experience somewhere like that in his life. Steve unravels himself from James as he takes their breakfast off the stovetop and passes him a plate, on which James scoops the french toast while Steve makes a cup of maple syrup for dipping. Then he clumsily takes James’s hand and leads him over to the table. They sit down across from one another, but neither of them let go of their entwined fingers.

          James rubs his thumb against Steve’s and says, “What’s gotten into you?”

          “Hmm?”

          James holds up their joined hands. “You’re touchy this morning.”

          Steve presses the socked toes of his feet into James’s. “Are you complaining or something?”

          James presses back until they both give up and set their feet down on the floor.

          “No.”

          They have to let go to properly dig into their breakfast, but James senses a morning with Steve directly on him. He’s not wrong: After they clean up, it’s noon but Steve seems, for once, unaware of the way that they’re wasting the day, wrapping his arms around James’s waist and trying to pull him over to the couch.

          “One moment,” James promises, disentangling himself gently. Steve makes that contended humming noise again and lets him go.

          James only has to run back to their bedroom for a moment, because he forgot to do it when he first woke up this morning; he finds the little pad of paper kept next to their bed and sits down on the mattress to read the new additions there, words scribbled by his hand when he wasn’t there at all. He laughs for a moment at what’s written, then finds a pen in the bedside drawer and takes a few minutes to scribble back. He’s glad that Steve didn’t come in here, because for a second while he writes, it feels like he’s directly communicating with Bucky and it’s nice to have a private conversation with him without Steve there. James so rarely gets to speak with his counterpart.

          It’s still strange, sometimes—usually—to talk to Bucky, to ask him for things and trust him with others, Steve included. He still gets nervous about it, but less so, each and every time he picks up their pen.

          When he gets back out into the living room, he finds Steve putting away the pan and spatulas that can’t go in the dishwasher and have to be cleaned by hand instead. He dries his hands and takes James’s, and he leads James over to the couch, where they lay back together. Steve reclines back first, and James leans between his spread knees and rests against his chest. Steve is holding his hand again. Every single of inch of him feels warm.

          “Hey,” James says after awhile. Mostly he’s looking at their fingers where he’s playing with Steve’s, but he’s also paying a lot of attention to how the sunlight looks playing off Steve’s skin, streaming in through the window as it is, directly onto where they’re laying.

          “Hey,” Steve says back lightly.

          “What do you think we would be doing now?” James asks. “If we had gotten up at our usual hour and did normal people things?”

          “What is ‘normal’?” Steve asks, laughing lightly.

          “You know,” James says, slipping towards grumbling again as though Steve had once more asked for his name, “real people. Who have jobs and families and…hobbies.”

          “Hmm,” says Steve. He tightens his hold on James and settles down further on the couch like he’s getting even more comfortable. “We would probably have jobs, right? I bet you’d be in some scary position, like a bouncer or something. I, of course, would run a bookshop.”

          “You’d be a florist,” says James.

          Steve tilts his head thoughtfully.

          “I could be a florist,” he agrees. “But it’s noon, isn’t it? So we probably would have just gotten out of work and gone to lunch.”

          “Are we together in this…” He takes a second to find the word, foreign to him in almost every way. “…fantasy?”

          “Of course,” Steve says easily. “You met me at the sandwich shop we each went to for lunch all the time. We would go there now too, and have lunch together every day.”

          “We’re very romantic,” James laughs.

          “Yes, we are.”

          Steve sounds very sure of himself. James laughs again and brings their joined hands to his mouth.

          “I’m glad we’re here instead,” Steve says after a quiet pause. “Much better to be rich, famous, and laying on a couch together. I did the working shtick during the Depression. It wasn’t that fun. Plenty of overtime and very few perks.”

          “You came home to our other boyfriend.”

          He turns around just to see the sour look on Steve’s face; sure enough, Steve doesn’t disappoint, and James meets it with a grin.

          “Ha, ha,” Steve says blandly. “I hope you didn’t want to be a stand-up comedian in our other life, because I don’t think I could cheer you up after _every_ set. But yes, I guess I did get to come home to Bucky. Although, you could argue that now I still get to do that, and we’re not poor and sick all the time.”

          “Sick?” James can’t really imagine it. Unless it feels anything like the comedown from drugs, which he felt a couple of times when Bucky got all the perks and he got all the downsides. And once, on his cross-country trip after the Potomac but before he found Steve and made a home—but he doesn’t like to think about that.

          “Well, more me than him,” Steve muses. “I was scrawny, remember? My immune system wasn’t up to it.”

          “Up to what?”

          “Being alive,” Steve laughs. “Winters were tough.”

          James doesn’t know what to say to that. Comfort doesn’t come naturally to him, and anyway it was so far in the past, and Steve doesn’t seem bothered. He squeezes Steve’s hands under his own instead of answering. He feels Steve brush a light kiss to his hair. They lapse back into silence, and James hopes they spend the whole rest of the afternoon like that.

 

          They do. Nobody calls, and nobody knocks, and for the first time James learns that he doesn’t have to wait until dark to feel at home. He can be at home here too, unobscured and unguarded, not worried what’s real or who he is. Home isn’t just his ratty sweatshirt and jeans, him on the streets getting his heartbeat up to remind himself that he’s alive. Home can be this, too: Falling asleep in Steve’s arms and hoping the sun doesn’t go down for a few more hours. It does feel really nice on his face.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          Bucky finds that it’s difficult to live with somebody with whom he cannot directly communicate. Definitely difficult, but not impossible. Instead he finds other ways to talk to him.

          He wakes up alone one morning and rolls out of bed, Steve somewhere else in the apartment or on a run with Sam or seeing one of his other friends; Bucky doesn’t know what he gets up to all the times he doesn’t see him. He reaches for the pad of paper kept by the bed, like the message pad that he and Steve used to keep by their rotary phone in their apartment back in Brooklyn. Now it’s slightly bigger, and instead of phone messages it has letters in messy, rushed script mixed in with careful, cramped print: his and James’s.

          A couple of days ago, Bucky surfaced and left there a note to remind James that the anniversary of the day that Steve and Peggy first met was coming up, and James should tread carefully around Steve that day; and James had replied (in messy chicken scratch, like somebody writing with their nondominant hand) that he would, if Bucky would remember that Steve had been begging them to play nice at a party that Tony was throwing for Pepper’s birthday in a couple of weeks, and they apparently had to go out and buy a nice semiformal outfit for the occasion (James had so courteously relegated Bucky that task). Sitting down to this reply now, Bucky shook his head and wrote back: _Fine, I’ll do the fitting—but you’re on grocery duty for the next three weeks_.

          It’s difficult to fight back on these entreaties from one another, since they never know when the other will come back to argue their side. Bucky finds himself acquiescing to James’s demands more often than not.

          With a sigh, Bucky now puts down the pen and pad and heads into the other room. Steve’s not there, so Bucky scribbles a note on the whiteboard on the refrigerator— _at the store, be back in a couple hours_ ; grabs the card to the joint bank account, which is really Steve’s back account that he lets Bucky use, but Bucky feels better if he pretends that he’s contributing to it too; and heads out the door.

 

          By the time he gets back to the apartment, it’s early afternoon and he feels like he very much would like a nap. He collapses onto the couch, planning to do just that, but then Steve emerges from the bathroom a couple of minutes later, before he can quite drift off. Bucky lifts his head reluctantly.

          “Where have you been?” Steve asks. He’s freshly showered, and the cleanly dressed-down look is good on him; Bucky doesn’t hide his open gaze.

          He gestures towards the bag of clothes draped over one of the kitchen chairs.

          “Errands,” he says.

          Steve goes over immediately to sort through it, saying as he does, “Did you pick up fruit while you were out?”

          “James is on grocery detail,” Bucky says, stuffing his head back firmly in the cushion he was using as a pillow.

          Steve groans. “I want to make a fruit salad. You said you’d go shopping.”

          “No, James said he’d go shopping. It’s not _my_ fault he’s stubbornly hibernating. He owes me money, too. He took a twenty out of my wallet.”

          “We _all_ share a bank account,” Steve reminds him.

          Bucky rolls his eyes. “Money I find in the gutter is _my_ gutter-money. I wanted to buy smokes with that.”

          “I thought you quit,” Steve says, tilting his head at him.

          “Being clean is an occupational hazard of being locked up and brainwashed,” Bucky says dryly. “But now I’m back, and with super reinforced genes that mean I probably won’t get emphysema. So I want my Luckys.”

          Steve holds up his hands defensively, then drops them with a grin and backs out of the room again.

          “Take a nap,” he calls, “you’re grumpy.”

          “I’m always grumpy,” Bucky says. It’s to Steve’s light laughter in response that he gets to fall asleep.

 

 

          “Can I ask you something?”

          Steve looks up from his book. Bucky reclines back on the armchair he’s sitting on, his own book long forgotten.

          “Sure,” says Steve cautiously.

          “It’s nothing bad,” Bucky snorts. “Christ, you should see the look on your face. It’s like you think I’m about to move out.”

          “God forbid,” Steve says.

          He makes a gesture at him though, and Bucky heaves himself up from his chair and joins him on the couch. He throws an arm out over the back of the couch, nearly touching Steve’s shoulders where it curls around them there, and he feels Steve shift slightly closer to him in response.

          “Go ahead,” Steve says, properly bookmarking his page and looking up at Bucky with his full attention now.

          “I was looking over some stuff James said he’s been doing recently,” Bucky says cautiously.

          “Oh no,” Steve says, apparently needing no further clue than that. He hides his face in both of his palms. “Did he tell you about the incident with the stew?”

          “He told me,” Bucky says, dipping his head. “Jesus Christ, Steve. Why on earth are you teaching him how to cook?”

          “He wanted to learn!” Steve protests. “He was all bent up about missing all these important skills and knowledge—he’s an assassin, you know, and a really good spy and all that, but he doesn’t know anything about, you know, all the stuff that we learned just from growing up and having to teach all of it to ourselves. So he said he wanted to try to learn some of what he missed, and I’ve…I’ve been helping him.”

          “By burning him _and_ yourself on stray pieces of celery?”

          “Don’t judge me,” says Steve. “He’s a relatively fast learner, all things considered.”

          “All things considered,” Bucky snorts. “Goddamn. You’ll really do just about anything to defend him, and that’s saying something, because from what I’ve heard—he’s a mess.”

          “He’s trying,” Steve pouts.

          Bucky rolls his eyes. “Keep telling yourself that while you’re picking meat and vegetables out of your hair, Cap.”

          Steve narrows his own. “I’m telling him you teased him,” he says. “Just wait until he decides to get you back.”

          “I fear many things,” Bucky says dramatically, earning Steve’s unimpressed gaze back at him, “but myself is not one of them.”

          Steve pokes at his ribs. “Jerk. We’re not saving you dinner next time.”

          “Good thing me and him share a body then,” says Bucky, grinning.

          Steve groans, tipping his head back onto the back of the couch for a moment before looking over at Bucky again, this time with a little pout halfway onto his visage.

          “I’m always going to be outnumbered, aren’t I?”

          Bucky laughs and tugs on Steve’s exaggerated lower lip for a second before he leans in quick and kisses him soundly.

          “Yep,” he says cheerfully. Steve groans, and Bucky hops up and plops back down on his armchair to continue the book he was reading.

          He glances up at Steve just as he’s finding his page again. Bucky gives him a little grin, then quickly looks back down at his book before Steve can do something sappy back, like look too long at him with that face like he deserves the world.

          Bucky doesn’t know anything about deserving it, but he’s starting to feel—maybe, a little, if he squints at Steve and this apartment and the quiet he feels in his chest more and more often—like he might have it anyway.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          “Don’t _fucking_ tell me to calm down!” James screams. He turns and punches a hole hard in the wall next to him, and it’s not the first one there.

          The glimpses of his own face that he catches in the reflection of the window all look red and a little unfamiliar, and it does nothing to help the panic squeezing his chest now. He grabs fitfully at his hair, tugging helplessly.

          Steve is on him in a second, pulling at his hands until James, not letting them out of the fists they curl into, at least lets him clasp them safely in his own.

          “Stop, stop,” Steve says. Lower, in a mutter, he adds, “Christ, I wish Bucky would stop teaching you so many damn swear words. He at least doesn’t use them in public.”

          “We’re not _in_ public,” James says. His eyes dart around though, at the empty hallway that he didn’t get twenty steps down before he started to freak out. Sometimes he still has to ground himself that what he’s seeing is real, and that he can trust his sense after all. That doesn’t always feel like the case, even now.

          “I know,” Steve says. He chances letting go of one of James’s hands and runs his own up his arm, then back down, and again and again. “I know. But listen to me.”

          He goes silent until James, realizing what he wants, stops frantically darting his gaze all around the hallway and focuses his wild eyes back on Steve’s. Steve’s look is steady, and it somehow levels James’s own, just a little bit.

          “Please listen to me,” Steve says, softer.

          James swallows. He nods.

          Steve walks backward while tugging at him in careful, tiny steps, until Steve is pressed against the wall and James is pressed against him. It has the strangest effect of making him feel steady but not caged in, grounded but not trapped; James doesn’t move to hit things again when Steve lets go of his hands to run them both through his hair. He cradles the back of James’s head, tilting their foreheads close together so that James has nowhere to look but at Steve’s eyes, and failing that, his attention is still necessarily limited to the rest of Steve’s face.

          “No one is coming for you,” Steve promises. He strokes his thumb against James’s cheek now. “No one, you hear me? Even if they were going to, we wouldn’t let them do anything. But it’s just you and me, and we can do things like go to dinner together and _nothing is going to happen_. Our neighbors aren’t secret HYDRA agents watching us, and there’s no cameras here because we got them mostly disabled around our apartment, and nobody’s going to take you away. Or me. Nobody’s taking me away either.”

          James closes his eyes and tries to focus on breathing the way Steve taught him, by listening to how Steve’s breaths are coming and matching his own to that same tempo. Steve seems to immediately understand what he’s doing—it’s not the first time, after all—because he quickly shifts his breathing to an even, slow pace so that James has something level to mirror against. It takes many, many minutes, and after a few of them time tilts sideways and James doesn’t know how long he’s been in limbo there, but eventually his heart isn’t squeezed as tightly and he doesn’t feel inches way from plunging into complete hyperventilation. He rests his forehead against Steve’s collar and presses closer, feels Steve’s arms slip down low around his back, and tries not to answer the ache in his throat with tears.

          “Are you okay?” Steve asks.

          James does not answer. Steve lifts his chin with a knuckle and makes James look at him, which he does, blinking rapidly a couple of times before he focuses wholly on him.

          “Okay?” Steve asks.

          The rephrasing seems important somehow, and James finds it in himself to nod. Steve gives him a melted look, not sad like he expected, but not as certain of his bravery as James has come to know. Instead he looks ready to acquiesce, to give in, to let the panic win.

          “Why don’t we stay in tonight,” Steve ask, like it’s his want.

          James swallows a couple of times, wondering if he should go with his instinct—that panic, that paranoia that squeezes his throat to suffocation sometimes—or if he should accept that sometimes that’s not nature, just nurture.

          He steps back jerkily out of Steve’s arms, looking down at the floor all the while. He shakes his head rapidly. He wants to meet Steve’s gaze, but it won’t quite come.

          “No,” he says, swallowing hard again. “No. Let’s go to dinner. We already have reservations.”

          There is a long beat of silence. He raises his gaze to Steve’s.

          Steve gives him a small, crooked smile and stretches his hand out across the little distance between them.

          “That sounds nice,” Steve says, like it’s all James’s idea.

          James takes his offered hand tentatively, but his grip grows stronger as Steve begins to lead him down the hall. It feels like he’s being led anyway, even though their steps are matched. Steve isn’t looking at him, but James gets the sense that he has all of his attention regardless.

          “Should we get red wine or white?” Steve asks. His gaze flickers to James, who’s watching Steve’s profile raptly. Steve tilts his head at him. “Oh, right. I’m feeling like wine.”

          “Good call,” James says mechanically.

          They hold hands all the way down the elevator, and out the building, and down the street. Steve looks at the people milling around them and the cars rumbling down the road and the street signs they pass. After awhile he begins to hum a little tune that James almost, but doesn’t quite, recognize. The whole time, he keeps his gaze on Steve’s face, and he marvels.

 

          “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Steve asks, later, after they’ve eaten their fill and left and James feels a warmth buzzing beneath his skin that he only gets after three glasses of wine and the moonlight and Steve’s hand and a city at night.

          “Hmm?”

          It’s like any other usual grunt of him, but softer and more contented; he can see Steve, out of the corner of his eye, smiling so silly like James just serenaded him or said things that he’s felt but never said to anyone. Steve doesn’t say anything about it though, just forges on with his question and leaves James to the few secrets he has left. It makes James’s heart pound, that feeling he won’t name growing more and more. He knows it will probably burst soon, but not yet tonight.

          “You’re always so afraid somebody’s going to take one of us away from each other,” Steve says.

          “You know I—”

          Steve holds up his hand and says, “No, that’s not my question. I get that part. It’s not about trusting me or you or your mind, it’s just…kind of inevitable after everything you’ve been through. It might not go away for a long time. Maybe it won’t go away ever.” He blinks a couple of times, shakes his head, clears his throat. “No, what I wanted to know was…I know you don’t really believe that, logically. It’s just a panic thing. But do you still…Do you still think it’s inevitable?”

          James squints at him. He knows when Steve is asking something else than he’s saying—or maybe, in this case, it’s more like he’s asking something more than what James takes it to be.

          “They have always found me,” James says slowly. Until now, he guesses. He’s had nothing but time lately—he’s still learning every day what to do with it.

          “Because good things never last for you?”

          James pulls Steve to a stop. He gets a couple of steps ahead until their joined hands tugs on his arm, and he turns around. The streetlamps are on, casting everything into a yellowish light, and Steve looks absolutely otherworldly beneath all those shadows and brightness.

          “You have,” James says. He extracts his hand from Steve’s, only to step closer and press both his palms to either side of Steve’s face. His gaze is unwavering and fierce, but there’s softness there too, adoration making him melted instead of hard. “I get to keep some things for myself. They didn’t get everything.”

          “You made new things for yourself,” Steve says. “You get to keep those.”

          James nods, jerky but not scared. For once not scared.

          “I’ll make sure of it,” James says.

          Steve steps forward and James leans up and they meet in the middle in a hard, fierce kiss. James is part of that otherworldliness now, cast into the same astral plane. Once he’s in Steve’s aura, it doesn’t matter that he steps out of it again a second later—it clings to his skin like angelic paste. He feels like he’s glowing, inside and out.

          “I’ll make sure of it,” Steve agrees.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

          Steve has been watching him all afternoon; Bucky can feel it on his skin like the best kind of sense, something he can just tell is happening even though he never quite catches him at it. It goes on like that until nearly evening time, and even though they’ve been out all day, Bucky picks the middle of the park—the most crowded place they’ve been since they stepped out of the apartment this morning—to whirl on him and fix him with the most intense look he can muster when it’s directed at Steve and he isn’t doing something particularly stupid at the time.

          “Why are you looking at me like that?” he demands.

          “Like what?”

          As always, Steve sounds innocent and confused. Bucky narrows his eyes and doesn’t believe it for a second.

          “Like you’re thinking,” he accuses. He touches his shoulder with light fingers. “You know I hate when you start thinking like that.”

          Steve’s furrowed brow unknits and he laughs, leaning back with how funny he finds it.

          “Been talking to James,” Steve says, and Bucky groans loudly and covers his face with one hand.

          “What’s he been saying?” he grunts.

          When he peers through his fingers a second later, Steve is still looking at him and grinning so widely that Bucky knows he doesn’t want to hear it, any of it. Whatever it is.

          “You two are so alike sometimes,” Steve says.

          He sounds fond, brushing his knuckles gently against Bucky’s cheek and smiling more softly now. Bucky snorts and knocks his hand away by his wrist. He guesses it’s inevitable in some sense, because even as two people, James is Bucky’s other half in a whole separate way from how Steve is, too.

          “Please tell me what’s got you looking at me like that,” Bucky insists, rolling his eyes. “Come on, I’ve felt your eyes on me all day.”

          “Maybe I just like looking at you,” Steve shoots back. That same dumb smile still hasn’t left his face. “Alright, _fine_. You’re right. I was talking to James and he said some things that made me want to talk to you about it too. Just to, you know, make sure you were on the same page about it.”

          “If you’ve been hassling us about it for long enough, we usually are by now,” mutters Bucky.

          Steve ignores him, as he has a knack for doing when that’s the best course of action available. Bucky does let him circle his wrist with a couple of fingers (at this point, Steve’s the only person Bucky’s met who can still do that to him, for a couple of reasons) and tug him gently over to an unoccupied bench. At this time of day Bucky’s mildly surprised that there’s even an empty one there, although he guesses that it doesn’t much matter anyway; there’s still enough people around them that pretty much anyone could listen in on their conversation if they were interested enough and trying real hard. Weirdly enough though, even when he’s out with Steve and his metal hand is visible at the end of his sleeve most of the time, throwing on an old sweatshirt with the hood up doesn’t earn him that many stares in public as it has in other parts of the country. Sometimes—usually, but times like this in particular—Bucky really loves the city.

          For a second when they sit down, Steve still doesn’t say anything. Bucky is left turned towards his averted eyes and the fingers he has playing with a thread on Bucky’s jeans—but then at last he looks up.

          “You should have good things too,” Steve says quietly.

          For a long moment, Bucky has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Even though Steve is looking at him like he’s just revealed some deep and irreversibly life-changing truth about him, Bucky just sits and stares back at his earnestly open eyes for a long time. It’s a staring contest he’s pretty sure he’s going to lose, and that’s even with all the confusion settled in his chest.

          At last, he ventures to break the silence.

          “…What?”

          “You _do_ ,” Steve says quickly. “It’s like, you walk around all the time thinking it’s all your fault, what they made you do during the war—it’s some big weight on your shoulders and you think you have to carry it all alone and pay for all those sins—but—”

          “That _was_ my fault,” Bucky says bluntly. He shakes his head, casting his eyes around on the sidewalk around them. “I remember all of them, Steve. But I just don’t—I mean, where is this even coming from?”

          “They made you do it,” says Steve.

          Bucky shrugs. “But I did it.”

          For a prolonged moment, it seems that Steve has nothing to say. Then he grabs desperately at Bucky’s hand, the real one, and he squeezes it earnestly and leans in closer like that makes his point—whatever that may be—more relevant in some substantial way.

          “That’s a whole other battle,” Steve forges on. “All I’m saying right now is that you need to _trust_ that this all isn’t going away in some grand—I don’t know—some cosmic karma thing that happens to agree with your completely skewed sense of justice.”

          Bucky blinks at him. Then he does it some more. He grabs Steve’s hand, still covering his, with his metal one.

          At last he says, “Steve. _What in god’s name are you talking about_?”

          Steve sighs. “Even James came to terms with the fact that I’m here to stay long before you could. Talk about pathetic, huh Sarge?”

          Bucky looks at him for a long, long moment without saying anything at all. Steve looks back with a little half-smile on his face that makes Bucky feel like his chest is lit up with a whole flock of birds, relentlessly batting their wings at his ribs again and again, encouraging him to take flight with them.

          At last, Bucky sighs.

          “Okay,” he says.

          Steve looks like he’s not quite sure that he heard him right.

          “Okay?” he repeats.

          Even though the flat disbelief in his does not particularly encourage Bucky to agree, again, to something he was so hesitant about in the first place, he gives a tiny little nod. Then he rolls his eyes, just for good measure.

          “I’ll…try,” Bucky offers. “For you. Or—for me. I don’t know.”

          “Why not both?” says Steve with a shrug and a jerky little nod of his head.

          A laugh bubbles out of Steve then, steady and sweet, and Bucky chuckles back in return. He doesn’t quite know what he just agreed to, he guesses, but if it’s a peace treaty whose longevity feels anything like this moment, he really does want to try.

          “Come here,” says Bucky.

          Without hesitation, Steve throws his arms around him. People are staring when they start laughing and when Bucky curls his metal arm around Steve’s shoulders and when Steve presses his face into Bucky’s neck. He guesses it’s not an everyday sight, but still—people are staring and he doesn’t care who sees.

          The future looks easier and easier every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from [2YL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U22QQpHNT4) by the front bottoms :)
> 
> [my tumblr](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/151567904275) ❤


	7. shades of purple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tony expected us twenty minutes ago,” he sighs, “and however you feel about him or don’t feel about him, it’s Pepper’s birthday. If not for him or for me, then for her.”
> 
> Bucky rolls his eyes, although he does turn around to begin rifling through his half of the dresser. The collection inside is meager, but it’s something. It’s more than he’s had in a very long time.
> 
> “Your guilt trips haven’t gotten any subtler,” he comments as he’s digging around for suitable pants. 
> 
> “But they’re much more effective now.”

**BUCKY**

 

 

          A thrill runs through him as he steps up behind Steve where he’s looking in the full-length mirror in the corner of their bedroom. He winds his arms around Steve’s waist and presses a smile into his neck, ignoring how it makes it more difficult for Steve to do up the buttons on the semi-formal shirt he shrugged on twenty minutes ago. Bucky will miss how he’s left it open until now, the flaps of the shirt opening up to his bare chest while he finished getting everything else ready, but this is good too: pressing up against his back and being close enough to finally hear that Steve’s been humming a tune under his breath for God knows how long, feeling Steve rock back in his arms and then twist around when he’s done doing up his shirt. This will never get old.

          Steve leans his face close until their noses are brushing, and he squints at Bucky like he used to do when they were kids and he had a secret to tell.

          “You’re not ready,” Steve accuses.

          Bucky leans in quick to steal a kiss and then steps away from him, spreading his arms out like he’s showing off his somewhat-dressy shirt and the pajama pants he still hasn’t taken off from this morning.

          “True,” he says simply.

          Steve shakes his head. He crosses his arms over his chest.

          “Tony expected us twenty minutes ago,” he sighs, “and however you feel about him or don’t feel about him, it’s Pepper’s birthday. If not for him or for me, then for her.”

          Bucky rolls his eyes, although he does turn around to begin rifling through his half of the dresser. The collection inside is meager, but it’s something. It’s more than he’s had in a very long time.

          “Your guilt trips haven’t gotten any subtler,” he comments as he’s digging around for suitable pants.      

          “But they’re much more effective now.”

          Bucky looks up to glare at him in the mirror above the dresser, just in time to see Steve shoot him a cheeky grin and lean over to peck him on the cheek as he heads out of the room.

          “Steven Grant Rogers, you’ll be the death of me,” Bucky mutters. Steve’s bark of laughter from the hall lets him know he heard; Bucky smirks, somewhat more satisfied at having gotten in the last word.

          Steve’s waiting out in the kitchen when Bucky finds him, chewing on a rice cake even though he damn near threw a fit earlier when Bucky tried to find a midday snack because there’s supposed to be an extravagant four-course meal waiting for them at Avenger’s Tower. Steve gives him an innocent look back when Bucky glances at him accusingly, and Bucky doesn’t even begin to touch on the fact that Steve has boxes of rice cakes stuffed into the pantry. Sometimes, when he’s barely more than a year out of the very real reality of eating one-dollar garbage from the supermarket or straight up stealing from convenience stores or eating out of the trash when a restaurant throws out their leftovers, it’s hard for him to understand half of what Steve keeps in the cabinets at all. He has no idea how good he has it.

          Actually, he probably does. It’s all part of his elaborate plan to trap Bucky into loving him.

          Bucky leans over to kiss his temple and break off a piece of his rice cake while he does it, and this time Steve relinquishes the food willingly because even his hypocrisy doesn’t stretch that far. Bucky goes around to get his jacket from where he last threw it over the couch and tosses it over his arm instead. He turns back to Steve, brushing crumbs from his hands onto his jeans.

          “Ready to go?”

          Steve nods.

          Springtime is getting into full bloom now, and it’s evident in the air that hits them as they leave the building. The light breeze is nice, offsetting the stifling pressure of his semi-formal dress, keeping him cool on the short walk across the street to Avenger’s Tower. Inside is nothing to worry about either, not that Bucky’s surprised; Tony has the whole place rigged up to be a comfortable temperature all the time, never deviating more than a few degrees to ensure maximum luxury all year round. Bucky thinks that just about sums up Tony Stark.

          Everyone is already halfway to drunk by the time they arrive, although Bucky suspects there was a certain amount of cocktails consumed before the party really started anyway. Regardless, they’re late; no one’s surprised, they just let out happy shouts and converge on him and Steve at once. Everyone is comfortable with Steve, but not all of them seem to know what to do with Bucky just yet, even now. A braver few shake his hand, and Natasha slings her arm right over his shoulder.

          “Who are you today?” Clint asks, shaking one of Bucky’s hands with both of his so it’s entirely incased in his grip.

          Bucky laughs, while Natasha jostles him good-naturedly under her arm.

          “Bucky,” he answers, “for now. I’d say to fill me up on wine before he got here, but I don’t think that would do anything but make me really, really have to piss.”  
          Clint finds it funny because Clint’s sense of humor is as base as Bucky’s, and the two men grin at one another. Clint pulls Bucky out from under Natasha’s arm to guide him more fully into the gathering, and when Bucky turns around for one last glance at Steve, he sees Natasha squeeze through the circle around him to hug Steve too.

          Clint pushes some food into his hand at the buffet table set up along of the walls. The high-ceilinged room is packed; whatever is usually in here is gone for tonight, replaced with not just the Avengers, but businessmen and –women in their impeccable suits, and a bunch of people that Bucky doesn’t know at all. Clint introduces them to Bucky as they pass by where they set up by the bar so Clint can keep the drinks coming; there are a lot of other superpowered people, to Bucky’s somewhat surprise. Bucky remembers Billy, and America, and the girl Kate on her arm; but he forgets most of their names as soon as they pass by.

          When Pepper comes by to say hello, Bucky gets up and hugs her tight.

          “Thanks for inviting us,” he says, smiling warmly at her. He feels it, too. After that first dinner when they met, he’s surprised she ever wanted to see him again; but she treats him as sweetly as she does everyone else (except Tony, perhaps, but then again Pepper has her work cut out for her there and they seem to bicker in a loving way most of the time) and just hugs him again when he says this, too.

          “You’re welcome anytime,” she says kindly. “I have to go check on the first course, but make yourself comfortable, okay? I can introduce you to some people later, if you’d like.”

          “Clint’s taken on that job already,” Bucky says, half-turning as he points back at him. Clint waves at Pepper from their seats.

          Pepper grins at them both.

          “Lucky me then,” she says. “Have fun, okay? Annette!”

          And with that her attention is drawn away. Bucky returns to his seat beside Clint as Pepper hurries off to speak to the woman she hailed, and Clint and Bucky watch the women hug for a moment before turning back to each other.

          “She seems frazzled,” Clint comments idly.

          Bucky watches two different waiters, both with overflowing trays of drinks and snacks, nearly collide right into each other across the room. They stop to apologize and steady each other’s trays before hurrying off again in different directions. Bucky snorts.

          “Can’t imagine why,” he says dryly.

          Steve squeezes through the crowd just then, appearing at their sides like magic. Bucky lights up despite himself, aware of Clint’s attention on his other side, but he doesn’t care. Steve steps very close to him, closer than strictly necessary really, and presses his shoulder close to Bucky’s.

          “How’s it going over here?” he says.

          Bucky shrugs. “Clint knows everybody.”

          “I know,” Steve says fervently.

          “Oh, fuck off, both of you,” Clint says, tossing a wadded-up napkin at them. “Just because you never leave your little love nest doesn’t mean all of us get to skip out on Tony’s family dinners.”

          Bucky snickers. “Sucker.”

          They all sit and chat for awhile; Sam comes over after a bit, and then Bruce, and Clint drifts away, and it’s like that—their friends come and go like tides, and Bucky feels comfortable for once, like part of that ebb and flow they do so well with each other. He notices that a lot of the team doesn’t interact that much with the other guests, and guesses he fits in more than he initially thought.

          Around the second hour, him and Steve have migrated over towards a waiter with quiches in the middle of the more crowded area of the room, and it’s there that Sam finds them again. He looks—not grim, exactly, but there’s a pinch in his forehead that tells Bucky he does not come bearing fabulous news.

          He’s right. Sam holds up his phone to a news article and says, “This just came over the wire.”

          Steve and Bucky both lean in closer to see.

          The headline is large and simple, just glaring block letters saying: _IS CAPTAIN AMERICA GAY?_ with a subheading beneath it reading, “Has America’s favorite national icon turned his back on traditional family values?” and with both of these headings, a grainy black-and-white photograph and Steve and James holding hands (Bucky remembers being disgruntled that he hadn’t gotten to go to the flower market with Steve that day).

          Bucky snorts and leans away from the phone. His eyes linger for a second on Steve, still oriented close to it with his brow furrowed and his lips silently mouthing the beginning of the article, and then they skip up to Sam’s anxious face.

          “That’s an outright lie,” Bucky says casually. Both pairs of eyes jump to him. “How could they have forgotten Peggy so easily?”

          “Ooh, did you tell them, Sam?”

          They turn around to face the newcomer; unsurprisingly, in Bucky’s opinion, it’s Natasha slinking up to them with a smirk on her face. She leans her elbow on Steve shoulder, arching up on her toes to do it, but somehow the gesture doesn’t seem uncomfortable on her.

          “What about Peggy though, right?” Natasha continues, directing her catlike gaze at Bucky now to let him know she overheard. After a millisecond of eye contact, she looks back at Steve. “I mean, it’s crazy. He’s obviously bisexual.”

          Steve is getting redder by the second. He pinches at the bridge of his nose with two fingers and groans.

          “Can we please stop talking about this?” he says. “So what if I’m bisexual?”

          “So nothing,” says Sam quickly. “Just thought you ought to know that you’re both out to the world and should start getting your speeches ready.”

          “Tony’s gonna want to make you the new face of gay rights. It will make us look way better with all the bad press coming our way recently,” says Natasha. “You’d better watch your back.”

          “Shouldn’t that be me?” Bucky interjects. There’s a pause before he adds, “If I’m the gay one, I mean.”

          They all look at him for a second. Then the other three burst out laughing. Bucky wasn’t really serious, but it’s worth it to see the pink slowly recede from Steve’s cheeks. It’s worth it to see the easy smile next shot his way, too.

          Sam tucks his phone away into his pocket and Natasha plucks Maria Hill out of the crowd as if by magic; the two women start talking about recent politics while Sam gets distracted by a pretty waitress with margaritas, and for a moment, Bucky and Steve are lost in the lull.

          Bucky sidles closer to him. He feels their pinkies touch, then curl around each other. It’s like they’re back in grade school with their backs to one another watching the bullies approach, settling in for one last moment of peace and reassurance before the fight breaks out.

          “Think we’ll figure it all out okay?” Bucky whispers, just low enough for Steve to hear. His lips are barely even moving. There’s no reason for anyone around them to suspect that they needed this for just a moment.

          Steve leans his head closer.

          “We always have,” he whispers back.

          Bucky slips his whole hand into Steve’s and squeezes. He doesn’t give a damn, just then, when both Natasha and Maria look over and see—not that he’s ever been afraid of loving Steve, really. He’s just got a lot of time slinking in the shadows to make up for.

 

\- - -

 

**WINTER SOLDIER**

 

 

          James wakes up in a very expensive porcelain bathroom, where everything from the mirrors to the sinks to the door gleams and twinkles. If somebody asked him to describe what the future was like, back when he was stuck in a metal box most of the time and his bathroom was two trips a day to what was little more than an outhouse, he probably would have described something a little like this, though maybe with less toilets.

          He washes his hands for good measure and pushes back out into the main room. He has no illusions about what he’s walking into; he and Bucky have been discussing for days what to do at this event, putting on their best behavior for Steve’s and Pepper’s sake and doing what they can to make it go smoothly in case they pop in and out at inopportune times. James is pretty glad he was alone when he came to, anyway, just for awkwardness’s sake.

          He bumps into Tony first, talking to Wanda Maximoff about some project or another. Tony grins at him and pulls him beneath his arm, and James goes, huffing gruffly.

          Wanda giggles, watching James’s face as he tries to push away from Tony’s grip.

          When squirming gets him nowhere, James says, “Less touching,” and slinks out from under his arm without too much overt force. The large swell of the crowd is already making him wary and jumpy.

          Tony just gives him a strange look. He says, “You’re moodier than you were earlier. What happened, Steve give you a bad handjob in the bathroom?”

          James just blinks at him. Wanda grins.

          “I do not think he’s Bucky right now, Mr Stark.”

          “Oh, sorry.” Tony immediately takes another step away from him. Already, James feels like he can breathe a little easier. “Better?”

          “Yes,” James says. Stiffly, he adds, “Thank you.”

          “Anytime,” Tony says dismissively. He turns back to Wanda. “As I was saying—”

          James quickly gets bored of the technical talk and wanders away, only barely registering Wanda’s goodbye that she waves at him through the crowd that almost immediately swallows him whole.

          He wends his way through everybody, recognizing a few faces but completely unfamiliar with most of them, until he spots Steve standing by the far wall. There are a few people surrounding him, most of which he recognizes. James slips his way between the crowd around him to get closer, finding it’s much easier to move with them than through them.

          When he’s a little ways away, he nearly runs into a waiter. They both immediately pause to apologize, and James bends down to pick up the napkins that fluttered off of his tray when he stopped short; thankfully none of the food he’s carrying hit the ground. When James stands back up, handing back the spilled napkins and listening to the young man’s stuttered apologies, his attention drifts back over to Steve. From here he can just barely hear what they’re saying. The waiter is still mumbling apologies.

          “…I won’t pretend it’s not _super_ weird,” Sam is saying, shaking his head. “I mean, what? You’ve got two boyfriends, but they’re both the same boyfriend?”

          “I can’t believe you reached this level of dysfunctional,” says a girl with dark hair, grinning at him. “You surpassed most of us, and that’s pretty impressive.”

          “Skye’s right,” says Bruce. “This is a whole new level of weird, and that’s coming from the big green guy.”

          Steve just shakes his head at them all. “It’s not as weird as you think.”

          “No, no. It’s pretty weird,” says Sam. Then he grins at Steve and pats him on the back with one hand. “But still. We’re just glad you’re happy, man. After everything you’ve been through…”

          Another girl, a Latina who James doesn’t think could be any older than her late-teens, grins at the black-haired girl whose shoulders her arm is around.

          “Me and Kate just wanted to tell you,” says the first girl, “that we’re glad you’re happy. It’s really important to find somebody you can be yourself with. And I think you’re all that for each other.”

          Kate nods seriously, uncrossing her arms and sliding one around the first girl’s waist. “We know how difficult it can be when it’s like the whole world’s against you.” Then she grins. “Even if it’s super weird.”

          Steve grins at them. “Thanks. All of you. Although—” he looks up and catches James’s eye just then, like nothing at all, “—I’m not sure the whole world _isn’t_ against us sometimes.”

          The others laugh the way friends do when it’s not really not funny but that’s the whole point. James takes a step out of the crowd, waiter forgotten. Steve extends his hand and the others around him to turn to look. Many of them, James notes, have little smiles on their faces.

          James steps up to Steve’s side, slipping his hand into Steve’s. With a wall at his back, he feels a little less of that panic that had begun creeping in as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom. The smile Steve’s giving him isn’t hurting anything, either.

          “Miss me?” Steve breathes, just low enough that the others can’t hear.

          James squeezes his hand.

          “They’re right,” James says, louder than Steve had spoken. “We are pretty damn fucked up.”

          The others let out startled laughs, but James is only looking at Steve. And Steve is only looking straight back at him.

          “I know,” he says fervently.

          It sounds a little like _I love you_ , and James tries to say it back without saying anything. Maybe they’re being rude, floating in their own bubble, looking longingly at one another and ignoring the rest of the world—but after everything that’s happened, James thinks they’ve earned this one, tiny space of reprieve before the world creeps back at in. Against them, indeed.

          But Steve pulls at his hand and James shuffles a little closer, pressing against his side, and James feels everything he has ever been denied all these years, right there where Steve’s palm meets his own. The future, for the first time in a long time—maybe in forever—looks bright and golden. James wants to spend the rest of his life chasing that sunny horizon with Steve.

          And here’s the best part: He gets to.

 

\- - -

 

**BUCKY**

 

 

          The party is wilder when Bucky gets back to his own body, everyone much drunker than before. He’s slinking around the bar and some woman he doesn’t know is talking to him, her business suit crisp as ever but her red cheeks, frizzy hair, and tipping steps are telling him a different story entirely. Bucky nods and smiles along to what she’s saying, trying to catch up, but he thinks he could have actually morphed into an entirely different person right then and she wouldn’t have noticed at all.

          In a lull in her talking, he steers her around towards someone else and slips into the crowd. When he looks back, she’s still chattering away, not noticing at all that she’s speaking to someone completely new.

          The crowd is dense now, bodies pressed together the way perfect strangers don’t but drunk acquaintances do, and it’s harder to get around now that people think they sort of know him. Bucky feels a little like he did at the end of the night in all those dance halls he used to love, drunk and flirty and kind of just wanting to get back home with Steve.

          If only he could _find_ him.

          He eventually spots him, sitting with Sam and Bruce Banner and a pretty woman that Bucky doesn’t know. He slides over to their table through the last edges of the pressing crowd and pulls over a seat, sits down backwards on it. They all turn to look at him.

          Bucky gives an easy grin around the table. “What’d I miss?”

          It takes a second for them all to get it. The woman says, “But you just left to go get— _Oh_ ,” and they all start laughing, her included. She adds, with a curious little smile, “They told me about you. Bucky, right? I’m Claire Temple.”

          “Good to meet you,” Bucky says, shaking her hand.

          “Almost didn’t,” says Claire, tipping her head in Sam’s direction. “If I wasn’t his plus-one, I would have never gotten into a place like this. It’s _ridiculous_.”

          Bucky laughs. “Isn’t it? I’m still not used to all the glitz and money.”

          “She puts up with me for the parties,” Sam agrees. “It’s worth it.”

          The new information delights Bucky; he didn’t realize how detached he was from his so-called friends until they got to hang out outside the context of missions and breakdowns. He’d forgotten, momentarily, what it’s like to just exist with people. Everything he has with Steve is so much different that it’s hard to even quantify in the same context.

          While everyone is talking, Steve’s hand appears on his back, the gesture light, the meaning everything. He leans over to press a kiss to his cheek, and Bucky turns, catching him on the mouth; Steve presses back into him urgently.

          Bucky still doesn’t know how to handle the ability to be open with him like this, when he’s so used to staying shut up in their apartment and not letting the world even know he exists. Things are so different now, and he wants to keep up with the changing times, but it’s difficult, sometimes. He does guess, though, that anything that starts with kissing Steve will be an easy thing to adapt to.

          After, Steve looks over his shoulder and Bucky turns to do the same. Steve’s gaze casts around the party, easy and appraising, and Bucky spends more time looking at him instead.

          At last, Steve says, “Turned out better than expected, huh?”

          Bucky looks around at the guests again. Pepper had wanted a big affair, but timing and planning had been difficult, and the large swell of guests meant that everybody had a lot of conflicting schedules. Bucky’s honestly surprised they have the turnout that they do at all, because the expansive room is packed. Pepper seems happy though, when Bucky sees her at least—darting between guests, always with a drink in her hand and a smile on her face. Tony must have done something right, whatever he did to get everybody here.

          Bucky looks back at Steve. He leans in until he can press his forehead to Steve’s temple, and he feels Steve lean back on him minutely. Steve’s fingers find his own and they tangle together, effortlessly. Bucky’s not afraid, for once, of this moment getting interrupted. It’s not that nothing else exists in the world, just that the world will bend and reshape itself to fit the two of them inside it. It owes them that, after all. Steve hums contentedly.

          “Yeah,” Bucky says. “Much, much better than expected.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so, so much for sticking with me on this journey. it's been truly amazing, and i loved every second that i was writing this. it's one of the few times i've managed to stay on schedule for a fic, and i DEFINITELY want to thank you for all your enthusiasm/speculation that made it possible. it's been so great to dip into the fandom like this ❤
> 
> title from [for him.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv8e2oLW0v0) by troye sivan
> 
> [still on tumblr here](http://freyias.tumblr.com/post/151567904275)   
> comments are always loved and appreciated!
> 
> xoxox


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